(If you are looking for a rant on “students as customers”, I’m afraid you won’t find one here.)
I was reflecting more on why I stopped blogging in 2018. One of the main reasons was that at the time, a lot of my time was spent on discussions whose outcome is now public, but wasn’t at the time: through a long series of developments, my small institution eventually became part of an American university’s global network. (For those who know the College, we do very much continue to also operate as a UK higher education institution, just better resourced now.)
It’s clear that there is now much more explicit competition between universities than there was. Students visit multiple universities, and end up choosing one. Staff apply for jobs at multiple universities, and use an offer from one to get a better offer from another. I’m sure the same happened 20 years ago, but I don’t recall the same sort of ongoing concern about whether departments would secure enough new students or sufficiently prestigious new academics. Certainly, even though people might be acting in the same way as they were, the competition is now much more explicit than it was; and anyone who doesn’t engage in the race is thought to be actively disadvantaging themselves.
This means it becomes harder to share information. Where’s an educator to go when they want to reflect on programme development or the difficulties of an institutional change? We struggled with adopting a different organizational culture, and it would have been really valuable to be able to talk about it, post on social media about it, discuss it with organizational experts on Twitter – perhaps even find someone from another institution or company that had been through a similar process.
However, it does seem that universities are becoming more like companies. People can’t talk because organizational developments are major media announcements, so “leaks” are unwelcome. Nobody wants to freak out current or prospective students, staff groups, or others who aren’t privy to early discussions – especially where it is known that they might not immediately agree with the management’s chosen strategic direction, or indeed the purpose of the organisation. These are not features of a collaborative organization, but a commercial and competitive one that thrives on splashes of media attention, or where its public reputation is a volatile asset.
On another front, I have also increasingly started hearing comments about not sharing research ideas in progress, because of a fear of stolen ideas. Where are we going if academic research cannot be discussed before it is published? Competition for ideas, again, is not conducive to collaboration.
Perhaps it does boil down to the purpose of the activity or the organization. Where people don’t agree on where the organization is going, all changes become fraught and volatile. In the short term, most organizations want to avoid conflict and volatility, which then feeds secrecy.
I don’t think the answer is in de-marketising universities, or a return to some socialised utopia that probably never existed. But some sort of increased incentivisation of collaboration and peer-to-peer discussion of difficult organisational developments would be welcome. Otherwise, if people never hear examples from other organisations, all change will continue to feel fearsome, and people will perceive that their negative experiences and emotions are caused by the unique circumstances of their own institutions. This is usually not the case, and being able to share and communicate about these experiences would make everyone’s lives easier.
Confessions of a lecturer 