The Gonzo Way

I've just smoking a ciggy in the back garden in between feverishly grading term papers and the cogs of my deranged mind began to crank and squeal in all directions as if straining on their axes. I'm thinking constantly about the purposes of our profession and its future. It strikes me that a slinking corporateness is gradually invading all aspects of our work lives in universities. This in one respect is a natural product of turning what we do into an open market business with customers who are required to pay more and require increasing evidence of value. I essentially don't have major problem with much of the thinking behind this - I work in a business school in a competitive, high demand study area which boasts robust student numbers and good levels of progression into "real" jobs at the end of it. I also think that we can always improve our service to students - I've always been a worker in service industries in many forms and don't have a problem with delivering value. I think building rapport and having student interests at heart beneath it all are essentials to what we do. What I am increasingly feeling is that the rush to monetise what we do and the injustices that go with it are often negating the core education "product" we deliver - for want of a better way of putting it. It surprised me recently when I was forwarded by an esteemed editor of an education journal (and fan of this blog) an article which had been submitted by a "professor" of such a monetisation of education and research philosophy. The editor's aim was to get me to quickly produce a boil in the bag rebuttal to this fairly vague opus which I didn't have time to do. I still might, but what intrigued me was the limited time I was being given to do it in the mad rush there seemed be to get the journal edition to press. The reason I was given was that none of the other colleagues asked prior to me seemed willing to step up to the plate and throw their contribution into the debate. Now I don't know exactly what the reasons were for this reluctance - perhaps time for them was also a limited commodity. Alternatively, perhaps my esteemed colleagues viewed the invitation as an opportunity to, as Professor Klash put it when I asked him, "write a career suicide note." To be sure, with increased, looming job insecurities on the horizon thanks to the coalition "government's" shortsightedness about student fees, I'm sure the last thing a hopeful business academic might want to be seen to be indulging in is an open campaign to undermine one of the major facets of the university's "enterprise" initiative - something it's invested much into in recent years. Certainly enterprise talks - particularly when new areas of revenue are looking like they'll soon be needed. Our new boss comes not from academia but from a leading City corporation. He's a business manager, now managing a business school.

Anyway, tea break over. Back to the machine. I'll get back to this though, I promise. I have to. Apart from my family, Hunter, my research and my teaching, I think about little else these days.
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