Globalisation and its discontents:

a university perspective

Sir David Watson

Professor of Higher Education

Principal, Green Templeton College, Oxford

ESMU/HUMANE Seminar

Oxford University

27 September 2013

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Globalisation and civilisation : a paradox

‘What we call our civilization is largely responsible for our

misery, and that we should be much happier if we gave it

up and returned to primitive conditions. I call this contention

astonishing because, in whatever way we may define the

concept of civilization, it is a certain fact that all the things

with which we seek to protect ourselves against the threats

that emanate from the sources of suffering are part of that

very civilization.’ (Freud, Civilisation and its Discontents,

[1930])

Outline: eight provocations

• Expectations

• Who owns the university?

• Academic exceptionalism

• World-classness

• Research networking

• University-like businesses

• MOOCing

• Southern theory

Coda: how do universities change?

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P1 The University and Society:

expectations

•Conservative and radical

•Traditional and innovative

•Ceremonial and

iconoclastic

•Excellent and equal

•Entrepreneurial and caring

•Competitive and collegial

•Charitable and commercial

•Monastic and marketised

•Autonomous and

accountable

•Critical and supportive

•Certain and provisional

•Short and long term

•Ethical and Technical

•Local and international

(and in between)

•Private and public

P2 What‟s the jurisdiction?

• Governance (strategic direction, appointment of

leaders, accountability)

• Funding (direct and indirect controls, e.g. fees)

• Operational conditions (subjects and levels of

provision, conditions of employment, procurement

etc.)

Who (or what) makes the weather?

“Stakeholders”

Who owns the university?

•Politicians

•Employers

•Neighbours

•The media

•“Partners” and “clients”

•The HE “gangs”

•The “green ink file”

Who shares the risk?

• Nurture and noise

• Inputs and outcomes

• Pre-nuptial agreements

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Words changing over time

• Stakeholder

• Amateur and Professional

• Client

• Consumer

• Welfare

• Maverick

• Manager

See Maria Boomhower: http://ezinearticles.com/?-Etymology--How-Words-

Change-Over-Time&id=12709

P3 Academic “exceptionalism”

• Stability

• “Flatness:” professionally argumentative

communities

• Wider, overlapping loyalties

• Public purpose/social business

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Academic membership: the

“psychological contract”

• Honesty (inc. scientific procedure)

• Reciprocity

• Manners

• Self-motivation

• Discipline

• Respect for the environment

• Collective agreement

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The question of civility (1)

Being a dean in an arts faculty is very tough. Why? Because colleagues in the social sciences and humanities have been trained to be hyper-critical. Their disciplinary expertise provides them with a toolbox of devices to dissect and unravel the implementation of the best-intended strategic initiatives. They increasingly exercise this talent in extraordinarily difficult funding environments…. They operate in an environment in which a quickly written email may generate detailed semiotic analysis and imputation of ill intent.

In the academic environment, very clever people may turn their very clever minds to negative ends. We can understand and rationalise this. It reflects in some ways colleagues' passionate commitment to their discipline, to their scholarship and their intellectual autonomy. It reflects the influence of the challenging, under-resourced environment in which we work.

But it also may reflect an unwillingness to exercise what John Paul Lederach calls the moral imagination, the ability to empathise, to build peace, in this case with those who do their best to lead.

Sharon Bell, The Australian 12 September 2007

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The question of civility (2)

• “bullying does not occur exclusively in formal hierarchical

relationships between managers and their line reports, although this is

the most commonly-observed relationship…bullying is also reported

as occurring between peers, subordinates, line managers and external

customers or clients” (CMI, 2008, Bullying at Work 2008: the

experience of managers. 3.6).

• Sims, D. (2005) “You Bastard: a narrative exploration of the

experience of indignation within organisations.” Organization Studies

26 (11), 1625-1640.

• Twale, D.J., and De Luca, B.M. (2008) Faculty Incivility: the rise of the

academic bully culture and what to do about it. San Francisco: Jossey

Bass.

• Hollis, L. (2012) Bully in the Ivory Tower: how aggression and incivility

erode American higher education Patricia Berkly LLC.

P4 World-classness

What counts

•Research

•Media interest

•Graduate destinations

•Infrastructure

•International “executive”

recruitment

What doesn‟t count

•Teaching quality

•Social mobility

•Services to business and the community

•Rural interests

•Other public services

•Collaboration

•The public interest

P5 Research networking

The scientific world is becoming increasingly interconnected, with international

collaboration on the rise. Today over 35% of articles published in international

journals are internationally collaborative, up from 25% 15 years ago.

The primary driver of most collaboration is the scientists themselves. In developing

their research and finding answers, scientists are seeking to work with the best

people, institutions and equipment which complement their research, wherever

they may be.

The connections of people, through formal and informal channels, diaspora

communities, virtual global networks and professional communities of shared

interests are important drivers of international collaboration. These networks span

the globe. Motivated by the bottom-up exchange of scientific insight, knowledge

and skills, they are changing the focus of science from the national to the global

level. Yet little is understood about the dynamics of networking and the mobility of

scientists, how these affect global science and how best to harness these networks

to catalyse international collaboration (RS, 2001:6).

Knowledge, Networks and Nations: global scientific collaboration in the 21st

century

Royal Society Policy Document 03/11. London: The Royal Society DES2096

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P6 “University-like businesses” “Anyone who has ever run a university, a film studio, or an open source software project will tell you that getting the most out of people seldom means managing them more, and usually means managing them less” (60).

“Whole Foods approach to management twines democracy with discipline, trust with accountability and community with fierce internal competition” (72).

“[W.L.] Gore wins big by not betting big, but betting often and staying at the table long enough to collect its winnings” (95).

“Like an elite engineering school, Google‟s management model is built around small work units, lots of experimentation, vigorous peer feedback, and a mission to improve the world (107).” “As is true in academic life or on the Web, control at Googled is more peer-to-peer than manager to minion (111).”

“Torvalds [Linux] understands that in a community of peers, people bow to competence, commitment, and foresight, rather than power” (207). “Like professors vying to get published in prestigious journals, coders hanker for the peer recognition that comes from making a visible contribution….The lesson: a successful opt-in system is one that allows contributors to take their „psychic income‟ in a variety of currencies” (209).

Gary Hamel (2007), The Future of Management. Boston: Harvard Business School Press

P7 Open and Distance Learning

• 1838 University of London external degrees

• 1890s US “degrees by correspondence”

• 1920s NYU and Harvard “radio” degrees

• 1965 UK University of the Air (Open University)

• The “mega-universities” (John Daniel)

• 2002 MIT On-line

• 2006 Khan Academy

• 2008 The “connectivist” movement (Manitoba)

• 2010 Udemy

• 2012 The Year of the MOOC (Udacity, Coursera, Futurelearn)

P8 “Southern Theory”

• “Social science can only have one, universal, body

of social theory, the one created in the global North”

(ix).

• The “new configurations of knowledge that result

when Southern theory is everywhere respected, and

differently formed theories speak together” (xiv).

Raewyn Connell (2007), Southern Theory: the global dynamics of

knowledge in social science. Cambridge: Polity Press

The view from the South

University-community engagement: the

“northern consensus”

• “Being there”

• Character and democratic instincts

• Service-learning and volunteering

• Public support

• Knowledge transfer

“Globalization from below.”

• “It means stepping back from those obsessions and abstractions that constitute our own professional practice to seriously consider the problems of the global everyday.” (17-18).

• “In the public spheres of many societies there is concern that policy debates occurring around world trade, copyright, environment, science and technology set the stage for life-and-death decisions for ordinary farmers, vendors, slum-dwellers, merchants and urban populations. And running through these debates is the sense that social exclusion is ever more tied to epistemic exclusion and concern that the discourse of expertise that are setting the rules for global transactions, even in the most progressive parts of the international system have left ordinary people outside and behind.” (2).

Arjun Appadurai (2000) Grassroots Globalisation and the Research Imagination. Public Culture, 12: 1-19.

Universities in the “global everyday”

• External national power and internal control

• Social, political and economic circumstances

• Professional/vocational training

• “Translational” research

• Aid

• Academic freedom (and corruption)

• A global header tank (e.g. brain circulation, IPR)

David Watson, Robert Hollister, Susan Stroud and Elizabeth Babcock (2011) The

Engaged University: international perspectives on civic engagement. London &

New York: Routledge

University-community engagement: a

“southern narrative”? (1)

– relative lack of a “comfort zone;”

– drive for “transformation” or “solidarity;”

– priority of “development” (or social returns) over

“character” (or individual returns); and of

“national cohesion” over personal enrichment;

– strong focus on human capital, and

“employment” over “employability;”

– “necessity trumps choice,” and investment in HE

is seen as more than a consumer good;

University-community engagement: a

“southern narrative”? (2)

– use of private bodies for public purposes;

– use of international partnerships for assistance

not “positioning;”

– fewer hang-ups about the instrumentality of the

“vocational curriculum;”

– acceptance that religion and science should work

in harmony;

– a very practical world of “Mode 2” engagement,

alongside Mode 2 research and teaching;

– a sense of societal pull over institutional push.

Coda: how do universities change?

• The “avalanche”

Michael Barber‟s “Avalanche”

• A global labour market

• Not met by traditional HE

• Cost increases

• Fall in graduate premium

• Content revolution

• New providers

Barber, M., Donnelly, K., Rizvi, S. (2013) An Avalanche is Coming; higher

education and the revolution ahead. London, IPPR.

http://www.ippr.org/publication/55/10432/an-avalanche-is-coming-higher-

education-and-the-revolution-ahead

Another way

Who is this?

Coda: how do universities change?

• The “avalanche” • Proximate development

• Progressive engagement

• Marginal gains

• Creative, temporary cross-

subsidy

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“A grown-up culture”

“The leadership priority seems to be to create and

preserve a grown-up internal culture, where

emotionally intelligent interactions predominate,

which neither over-claims nor over-blames, and

which has a good, research-informed, sense of itself,

its possibilities, and its position in the scheme of

things.”

Guest Editorial, Higher Education Quarterly, 62:4, 319-22