Chapter 4: Knowledge production and autonomy: the challenge from
5. Implications for the university
5.2 Implications for university autonomy
metanarrative of reason, as well as the rise of techno-science. The rapid development of technology has meant greater scrutiny from governments and the facilitation of the rise of instrumentalist views of knowledge. Lyotard explains why this should be so as follows:
“Given the limitations of human senses and the increasing complexity of empirical demonstration and proof, the principle of experimental replication has become increasingly dependent on sophisticated and expensive technology”.379 This enforces a game of efficiency. The production of scientific proof costs money and therefore a maximum output (proof), minimum input (funding) model becomes increasingly more applicable. Knowledge becomes the organisation of data for immediate problem-solving, with the ultimate goal being an increase in the overall efficiency of the social system.
“Technology is therefore a game pertaining not to the true, the just, or the beautiful etc., but to efficiency: a technical „move‟ is „good‟ when it does better and/or expends less energy than another.”380 In this analysis, Lyotard foreshadows also the rapid advance of globalisation, explored later in this thesis, which has brought about an increase in functionalist views of higher education institutions.
Humboldtian definition of the relation between the good and the social. In its place, a new definition of the relation between the university (among other knowledge
„agencies‟) and the economy and society has developed.382
The epistemological bankruptcy of the Enlightenment narrative, that knowledge is no longer seen as the training of minds but as a commodity exterior to minds which can be bought and sold, and that knowledge has become the principal force of production, have as an effect that learning is no longer exclusive to universities but falls within the purview of the state. “In the computer age, the question of knowledge is now more than ever a question of government.”383 The problem posed by Lyotard has as a characteristic that:
It removes from universities one of their traditional defences against co-option by the state. This is not merely a matter of institutional autonomy. In the face of the specification by the state of the need for new and different kinds of „knowledge‟
performativity, for new management and supervisory practices, universities must rely for their defence by their rectors, vice-chancellors or presidents on the practicalities of politics. The historic claim of universities to have special knowledge, to be creating special knowledge and to be testing truth is undermined. They have no principle for the exclusion of a multiplicity of discourses and they have no epistemological principle for the exclusion of performativity as a definition of their main functions.384
While there are many language games, the technocratic decision-makers proceed on the assumption that that there is a commensurability and common ground among them and that the whole is determinable. “They allocate our lives for the growth of power. In matters of social justice and scientific truth alike, the legitimation of that power is based on optimizing the system‟s performance – efficiency. The application of this criterion to all of our games necessarily entails a certain level of terror, whether soft or hard: be operational (that is, commensurable) or disappear.”385 With the rise of techno-science,
“the old humanist (emancipatory) narrative of legitimation has been replaced by a new ideological legitimation promulgated by the state (and written into the missions of the education corporations) in terms of the value of efficiency, which has as its goals, power
382 Robert Cowen, ”Performativity, post-modernity and the university”, Comparative Education, 32 (2) 1996, p.248.
383 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1987, p.9.
384 Ibid. p.249.
385 Ibid. p.44.
and growth, rather than truth.”386 In the postmodern view, the locus of control of knowledge production has shifted from the university to the state and beyond.
In response to Derrida‟s rhetorical question about whether the university has a raison d‟être, the postmodern view is that the game has certainly changed. A further consequence of the rise of techno-science and performativity implies, as mentioned above, is that the university no longer has exclusive control over knowledge production, carried out for the sake of the moral progress of the nation. Indeed, not only have the boundaries of the university become permeable, but so too have those of the nation- state. Indeed, these are the conditions inherent in Quadrant Four of the matrix of concepts of academic freedom outlined at the beginning of this thesis. The politics of research and teaching can no longer be reduced to a problematics based on the nation- state but must take into account “technomilitary networks that are apparently multi- or trans-national in form”.387 This raises new legal and ethical questions for the relationship between the state and the information-rich multinational corporations.
Furthermore, the distinction between pure and applied research is breaking down as it is no longer possible to distinguish in modernity the principle of reason from the idea of technology. Derrida points to the increasing external interventions into the affairs of the university from the presses, foundations, and mass media. But the greatest intervention comes from the military and the state, which can invest in any sort of research at all, either pure or more applied or „oriented‟ research, and can exercise control through funding, or limiting funding. Derrida writes, “The unacceptability of a discourse, the noncertification of a research project, the illegitimacy of a course offering are declared by evaluative actions: studying such evaluations is, it seems to me, one of the tasks most indispensable to the exercise of academic responsibility, most urgent for the maintenance of its dignity.”388
386 Michael Peters, “Performance and accountability in „post-industrial society‟: the crisis of British universities”, Studies in Higher Education, 17 (2) 1992, p.133.
387 Jacques Derrida, “The principle of reason: the university in the eyes of its pupils”, diacritics, Fall 1983, p.13, in Michael Peters, “Performance and accountability in „post-industrial society‟: the crisis of British universities”, Studies in Higher Education, 17 (2) 1992, p.136.
388 Ibid, p.136.
The theoretical perspective of postmodernism that performativity is the new legitimating principle is consistent with other critiques of the modern university that are not necessarily postmodern in origin. Cowen points to an overlap in the critique of universities from a postmodern perspective and those emanating from public agencies.
He argues that the university reform movement in the 1980s and 1990s (certainly in the Anglo world, about which he is writing) was centred on making university systems efficient and relevant. Not only is the argument epistemological therefore, but also empirical in nature. “The concept of efficiency includes measurement of university production (of knowledge) and the test of relevance includes making what is researched (and taught) useful to the national economy.”389 One of the agencies he uses as an example of issuing a critique which is consistent with postmodern views, is the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In a 1987 report, it argues that the insularity of universities and knowledge production needs to be breached. It advocates that universities should more carefully meet „external expectations‟, including those of governments, and should enter into multidisciplinary research efforts in fields such as genetics, opto-electronics, high energy physics, material science and biochemistry to forge “new links between academic researchers and those who wish to exploit their findings in production, defence, medical practice and public service.”390 The report‟s further recommendations include a need to concentrate basic research in a few selected institutions for financial reasons, and that the trend should be to emphasise applied research and development. This is consistent with Lyotard‟s view that science has become science-in-use.
There is also a wealth of empirical evidence to substantiate the postmodern view of the changed role and diminished autonomy of universities. With reference to Australian and British contexts, Harker writes that:
An examination of the trends in higher education reveals the central importance of performativity in driving the quality agenda in national higher education systems.
National systems are being driven by the following forces: the move from elite to
389 Robert Cowen, “Performativity, post-modernity and the university”, Comparative Education, 32 (2) 1996, p.246.
390 W. Taylor, Universities under scrutiny, Paris, OECD, 1987, quoted in Robert Cowen, “Performativity, post-modernity and the university”, Comparative Education, 32 (2) 1996, p.247.
mass higher education with accompanying growth of student diversity; the international mobility of students and the consequent move to internationalise quality assurance standards; employer demand for generic work skills; the exponential growth in knowledge and the growing importance of information and information literacy to economic and social development; the influence of technology on the modes of delivery of educational services; the re-emergence of student consumerism; and increased accountability demands for the use of government funds. These forces can be seen as strong reinforcers of the „production- measurement‟ approach to quality assurance.391
The rise of the quality agenda, the increasing use of performance indicators in managing higher education systems, and the growing role of market forces in shaping higher education further serve to substantiate Lyotard‟s view of the ascendance of the performativity principle.