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• Title: Universities and Postmodernism: The Green Paper and Some Responses (Part One: When the Earth Moved: The 1980S Revisited)
• Author : Arena Journal
• Release Date : January 22, 2002
• Genre: Religion & Spirituality,Books,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 243 KB

Description

It has been noted in the recent debate about the Green Paper on Higher Education that it enjoys a surprising degree of support by vice-chancellors of Australian universities despite its failure to address issues of principle: it is characterized by the striking absence of a concept for the present university and its envisaged future, the current state of knowledge and the sciences, and current and future needs of Australian society. * (1) The only rationale for reforming the universities given by the Minister, John Dawkins, is one of vulgar economism: the Australian economy is suffering from disturbing structural deficiencies, and as the universities are capable of producing knowledge applicable to industry and commerce, they should be restructured in such a way as to make them instrumental in the process of economic therapy. Vice-chancellors not only appear to accept such a crude approach to their institutions but are prepared to act as the Minister's auxiliary calculators, who know exactly by how many percentage points the universities will and should grow or how many more degrees can be issued by the year 2010. They appear entirely uninterested in questions as to what and how these students will be taught, what their later opportunities in life and their job prospects will be, or what the reformed university will look like. As they find themselves in full agreement with representatives of Australian industry and commerce, the conservative government in London and the Opposition in Canberra, (2) there seems little to worry about. Few attempts are made to conceptualize the current and future function of Australian universities in a world that finds it extremely difficult to cope with the effects of the post-industrial electronic age; appears unable to generate enough work to give everyone in its adult population a job; increases average life-expectancy and time available for leisure without enabling the beneficiaries to make meaningful use of it; faces the alarming consequences of continuous destruction of its environment; experiences a growing inequality in the distribution of opportunities and rising levels of frustration and open violence; and is insecure as to its identity and position in rapidly changing constellations in Asia and the Western world. Such questions seem of little importance for the Minister and his supporters so long as both major prerequisites for a successful political operation are being met: (a) the political power must be there to implement changes without strong and organized resistance from the electorate; and (b) the planning figures of the Green Paper--once they have been adjusted to the undoubtedly meticulous figures produced by the champions of calculation, the vice-chancellors and their administrative crews--must guarantee the success of the reform, success being identified with admission of larger numbers of students, more degrees, and greater opportunities for industry and business to exercise control over curricula ('public accountability'). Vis-a-vis such a program for success, there seems no need and, indeed, no room for philosophical and conceptual debate.

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