Chapter 2: Academic freedom in different contexts
2. Academic freedom in different contexts
2.2 United Kingdom
Mention has already been made of the prominence of the use of the version of academic freedom of Quadrant Three (Q3), the „guild‟ version, in Britain in the 1980s.
Neave has suggested that until that decade, the predominant practice of academic freedom was based on a view that institutional autonomy was essentialto the well-being of the academic endeavour, and this view was until then endorsed by the state. Indeed, a government spokesperson expressed it thus:
The traditions of control in Britain show interesting differences from those I believe to be traditional in Germany. Universities, even if largely public-funded, are still private institutions, with their own governors and management. There is little tradition of direct control on their activities or even their spending. The tradition of „academic freedom‟ is accepted by all interests, and is jealously guarded.131
The predominant view was that the state should have very little to do with the regulation of universities, beyond facilitating their functioning through providing the financial means for higher education to operate. Academics were considered best- placed to organise their own affairs which would be the greatest guarantee that truth would be pursued effectively. This view, which found sympathy with many academics, especially those operating in the institutions based on the Oxbridge model, ran counter to an increasing emphasis on institutional accountability emanating from the conservative government of the day. Under the Thatcher government, a comprehensive policy and measures of quality assurance were introduced which attempted to call higher education institutions to account, not only for their use of public funds, but to demonstrate how they assured the quality of their degrees and other educational offerings. In the British context, this was a case of a government venturing into territory previously considered the exclusive domain of academics – pushing the boundary between state and institution closer to the institution, and permeating it in significant ways.
Part of the rationale for this development lay in the need to manage the effects of the so-called massification of higher education. The rapid post-war expansion of higher
131 Tim Boswell, “Lecture on British universities”, 15 September 1994, London, Department for Education, 1994, in Rosalind M.O. Pritchard, “Academic freedom and autonomy in the United Kingdom and Germany”, Minerva, 36, 1998, p.101.
education was followed by a drive to increase the proportion of 18-24 year olds in higher education, mostly in response to perceived competition from other higher education systems, e.g. in Europe and the United States. Henkel, drawing on the work of Kogan, argues that there were four policy phases in higher education in post-war Britain; 1945- 1963, characterised by a binary system of research-led universities and other training institutions, 1963-1975, characterised by a growth in the non-university sector, 1975- 1981, with 1975 seeing the end of unfettered block grants to universities and the beginning of a reduction in funding for universities, and 1981-1997, a period of major structural and policy change and dramatic growth, or massification.132
The democratic impulse to diversify the student intake to include a greater proportion of first-generation students, mature students and students from previously marginalised minorities led to a concern about the maintenance of academic standards, and therefore the government‟s insistence on the need to develop quality assurance procedures along the lines of those already implemented in the commercial sector. This development signalled the beginning of a breakdown in the system of trust that had characterised institution-state relations, and the outbreak of open hostility between the sectors, culminating ultimately in the universities‟ reluctant acquiescence with the new rule- governed and accountability-driven higher education context.
Indeed, a decade ago, Pritchard noted that:
The former relationship of trust between the universities and the government has now ended. The British university sector has been greatly expanded by the upgrading of the former polytechnics to university rank, thus leading to a much more disparate academic and political culture. Old-style interpersonal trust has become impossible to sustain, and the government‟s vigorous promotion of competitive market forces has set institutions against each other in their struggle to survive and prosper.133
Part of the shift is attributable to a change in economic policy, with the dismantling of the welfare state and the introduction of neo-liberal economics and fiscal discipline.
Ironically, instead of „rolling back the state‟ to achieve more autonomy, the effect was to
132 Mary Henkel, Academic Identities and Policy Change in Higher Education, London, Jessica Kingsley, 2000, p.30.
133 Rosalind M.O. Pritchard, “Academic freedom and autonomy in the United Kingdom and Germany”, Minerva, 36, 1998, p.103.
increase the role of the state and parastatal agencies in the regulation of higher education, as well as to introduce the market as another regulating factor. Two main features of British higher education at the time were the rise of steering by agency in a so-called „agency proliferation‟, as well as far-reaching changes in funding.134 As Henkel writes:
The autonomy of HEIs (higher education institutions) was limited and structured by national intermediary bodies, but at the same time they were impelled to take action to reduce their financial dependence upon the state. That meant entering a range of markets. Institutions were more accountable to the state and they became open to a greater variety of values and interests. They also had to develop organisations to manage increased size and complexity; matrix structures and staff with more varied qualifications and skills. Academics gained and lost power in this process…135
While some academics became managers and so gained power, “academics in the basic units could find that their autonomy was reduced and that areas of work which had previously been unquestionably their preserve were now under scrutiny and even intervention by not only senior academic management but also other occupational groups.”136
Bundy notes that these changes affected the understanding of universities as organisations and heralded the predominance of
a new, utilitarian view of universities. The socio-economic benefits of higher education were expressed in terms of national economic competitiveness;
universities were a tool, a resource, for human capital development and the production of relevant skills. In the early 1980s, the emphasis initially was on efficiency through improved governance. By the end of the „80s and into the „90s, there was a new, explicit enthusiasm for efficiency achieved by market relations within higher education.137
134 Guy Neave. “Times, measures and the man: the future of British higher education treated historically and comparatively”, Higher Education Quarterly, 60 (2) 2006, p.123. Neave lists the Higher Education Funding Councils, the Quality Assurance Agency, the Institute for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (now Higher Education Academy), the Learning and Skills Council and the possible addition of a Learning and Skills Leadership College and Sector Skills Councils (along the lines of the South African
Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs)).
135Mary Henkel, Academic Identities and Policy Change in Higher Education, London, Jessica Kingsley, 2000, p.64.
136Ibid.
137 Colin Bundy, “Global patterns, local options? Changes in higher education internationally and some implications for South Africa”, Kagisano 4, 2006, p.4.
Within this context, the debates around academic freedom have generally revolved around the notion of institutional autonomy and self-governance for the profession as a whole, rather than individuals‟ freedom of speech, although increasingly the latter is becoming a concern within corporatised institutional contexts. The threats to academics‟
collective freedom are seen to come from both demands for accountability from the state, and from the effects of market forces on higher education in a globalising world.
Academic freedom and institutional autonomy are seen to be conceptually aligned, and, it is widely believed, to be challenged by “the neo-liberal modes of governance [that] are changing the way in which we make sense of our world, as individuals, as academics and professionals”, so that “traditional notions of academic freedom, autonomy and purpose, which have been central signifiers of academic identity, no longer hold.”138 With an increased emphasis on the utilitarian role of higher education, and a purpose seen in vocational terms, higher education needed to be justified by its outputs to society. In short, “the legitimation of higher education by reference to ideals of individual intellectual or personal development or cultural transmission was no longer sufficient … the justification for academic autonomy and academic control of higher education had been weakened.”139
In summary, Bundy lists some of the changes that have occurred in British universities, among them the expansion of the system, the decline in public funding, the rise of the influence of market forces on the university and “a redefinition of the relationship between universities and the state. Historical forms of autonomy were modified by the rise of the „regulatory state‟ and by the discourse of efficiency and economy. Universities have become accountable to a whole range of parastatal organs.
Funding is tied to audit and review; teaching and research are subject to performance indicators and targets.”140 In Bundy‟s view, the effects of all these changes on
138 Suzy Harris, “Rethinking academic identities in neo-liberal times”, Teaching in Higher Education, 10 (4) 2005, p.421.
139 Mary Henkel, Academic Identities and Policy Change in Higher Education, London, Jessica Kingsley, 2000, p.233.
140 Colin Bundy, “Under new management? A critical history of managerialism in British universities”, in Walker, M. and Nixon, J. (eds) Reclaiming Universities from a Runaway World, Maidenhead, SRHE and Open University Press, 2004, p.163.
institutional autonomy, formerly so highly prized in Britain, have been deleterious. He writes that, “Accountability and the audit culture combine powerful moral reasoning with the methodology of financial accounting” and that “accountability appears to be a type of penance that is now being paid for former autonomy.”141
The possible parallels with the trajectory described above and the South African situation are a matter of debate and are discussed more fully in Chapter Seven. Evident in the account above is a different locus of the debates from the United States‟ context.
While the United States‟ debates relate most closely to Quadrant One understandings of individual academic freedom, the British debates are located in Quadrant Three in the main, with a fundamental concern being the shift in the boundary of the state towards the institutions and control in the name of the market being exercised in a much greater fashion than in the past.