Sunday Posts

The conversation about universities today are defined by two extreme views: One says that the universities are failing their mission by failing to serve their students, by failing to connect them to jobs, and therefore, failing to make them successful; the other says that the universities are failing their mission as they have abandoned their traditional values, they have become 'marketised' and are engaged in a struggle to fit into badly fitting form as education can't be a market activity. Two polar opposites, united in the agreement that universities are failing their mission - they are not doing what they are supposed to do. I have admittedly oscillated between these two views as I 'blogged' (rather than systematically researched) about the universities. I did see the problem of disconnectedness, the teleological view of the universities in some quarters that the universities have a purpose of their own, rather than being an institution to serve contempora...

The university is changing. This statement may be self-evident, but there is no consensus about what it is changing into, much less on whether this is a good thing. On one hand, there is nostalgia, based on an image of a golden age, which, as one of my teachers appropriately defined, was always based on as things were when the interlocutor was about twenty years old; on the other, there are the apocalyptic visionaries, the prophets of the information age, those who believe software is eating the world and should, must, eat the universities as well. And, overarching all these passions and interests is the very real question of entitlement - the questions of winners and losers of a new system - played out in Britain over the last few years noisily and vividly. I engaged in this conversation with intent and purpose. The changing landscape and its implications perhaps became clearer to me during the time I was attempting to set up a network of Vocational Training centres in many diff...