I mentioned yesterday that I took a very critical attitude as regards university reforms when I delivered my lecture this symposium in Italy. I started with mentioning a game that my American friend A* plays when she happens to be stuck in a School administration meeting: “the bullshit lotto”. The principle is simple and delicious. You play lotto with all the typical buzz words and expressions that you are to find in any administrator speech (and mind you, I have had enough administrative positions to have made my religion on delivering speeches: “though shallst not speak with buzz words”). She wrote me after a preschool meeting: “I nearly won, I only missed: ‘relevant and rigorous learning experiences’”. People at the symposium laughed at the anecdote (that is another part of my religion, as an academic: thou shallst entertain the people whom you have the privilege to talk to).
Then again, it is always a good point to mention the US, since they are supposed to be our best model (for the reforms) or our best nightmare (for people who do not like the reforms). It always comes as a surprise to Europeans, that even in the US, you have intelligent people who do not fall for the regular boring discourse on teaching, and in the case of higher education, researching.
The topic of my presentation was about “network and research”. “Networking research” would rank very high in some higher education reform bullshit Lotto. The problem is that it is difficult to work at the same time through networks and institutions. The example of funding is a meaningful one. Every four years, the government asks us to plan the (very—and far too—modest in the case of social sciences) subsides we receive for the next four years. And okay, the government is a big bureaucratic stuff: it takes it nearly two years of expertise to sign up. But the problem is less in the slow response of the government than in the fact that we are supposed at the same time to seek other sources of funding, which seldom coincide with what we are supposed to do for the ministry. We are supposed to belong to institutions of research—universities—which are governed in such a way that we have about 3 months to decide what we will be doing in the next 6 years—yes, 6, since we have to prepare a contract with the government that will be effective in 2010. So the four-year contract is in fact a six-year contract (you did not get it? Do not mind, most intelligent people do not get it). But at the same time we are part of networks the perimeter (buzz word) of which are very loosely connected with the frame of regular institutional development. An institution is group-based a network, project-based. I have nothing against this way of funding research, and working—in fact, most of money I have received to do research has been from networks, not from my university. But it means that we weaken the careful organization of research centers in our universities, while we spend time in reporting to our big bureaucratic organization because of this very organization.
Another contradiction is the kind of work we are supposed to do. Another big case for my bullshit lotto is the idea that we should evolve towards a more “corporate” culture. Being what I am, and having written what I write, I of course have nothing against the idea. The problem is that a) we talk about a French corporate culture, which might not be the most efficient b) that it is supposed to be totally bureaucratic (heavy hierarchy, high state regulation, no autonomy in the organization etc.) and at the same time corporate c) that the corporate model is the wrong one (basically the corporate model of the 70’s, big, organizational, centralized).
At any rate, a question is hardly raised: many competent academics chose their line of job, despite qualifications that could have lead them to do otherwise, because they have a sort of dedication to truth, knowledge and culture that would not thrive in a corporate environment.
If we go corporate, let us go corporate.
And do something corporate, not teaching and researching in universities.
