In defence of universities … under fire from left and right

Universities are under fire from both sides of politics. And I don't like it. Not that I think that counts for anything, except to name my bias before outlining the arguments and setting out a defence.

Universities changed my life

People with my kind of background, particularly women, didn't go to university when I left school. Not until it became free in 1974.

Thirteen years after leaving school, I sat in my first lecture hall. It was bliss. I learned ways to express previously half-formed thoughts and unformed questions. The insights of scholars provided sieves for the whirlpool in my head.

I may therefore be nurturing an idea of education that some would see as naive, outdated, or both. I do cherish a concept of universities as crucibles for ideas, creative thinking and critical analysis.

The case against universities

The attack on universities comes from both sides of politics. The right argues they do a poor job of meeting the needs of employers. The left argues they reproduce inequality under an umbrella of merit. Both arguments can be co-opted by governments intent on cutting costs. Universities, it can be claimed, are a waste of public money and they are unfair.

Universities fail employers … says the right

Bryan Caplan, professor of economics, is one who thinks that universities are a waste of public money. His argument goes like this:

• Most education doesn't teach you anything you use on the job.
• Getting the certificate is all that's important.
• Education's payoff comes from clearing hurdles. 'If you flunk a class, plenty of employers will trash your application. But if you pass that same class, then forget everything you learned, employers will shrug.'
• That is, qualifications are used by employers as profiling tools, and inefficient ones at that.
• This kind of profiling leads to credential inflation. The education needed to get a job outstrips the education needed do the job.
• We should, in such terms, be pushing for less education rather than more.

Universities are more (and less) than conveyor belts for employers

Employment selection processes that screen people in, or out, on the basis of qualifications, regardless of their relationship to the work, need scrutiny. But, doesn't the problem lie with the employment system rather than with universities? Employers might be better off developing their own processes, as Peter Martinsuggests.

Reducing universities to preselection conveyor belts, and then saying they're not very good at the job, and might as well have their funds cut, seems like putting the cart before the horse. It involves a distortion of the traditional role of universities, which are, for example, also research institutions.

Employers must surely carry primary responsibility for meeting their own recruitment needs. They may form productive partnerships with universities, but universities are more, and less, thanfee-for-service corporations hawking professionals from lecture theatre to hot desk (or home office under pandemic conditions).

Universities reproduce the meritocracy and hence inequality … says the left

The critique of universities from the left is that they prop up a false notion of meritocracyand hence promote inequality.

The meritocracy is an icon of modern society. It carries the story that people rise to the top because of their abilities, rather than because they have money behind them, or are well connected.

The meritocracy, it's argued, was enabled by Education Acts, implemented in Australia in the nineteenth century. Assessments within this system divide society into exam-passers and exam-failers.

Exam-passers have an entrée into the meritocracy. Parents therefore expend great effort to get children into the right schools and universities, sending them to cram-schools and providing extra-curricular tutoring.

The meritocracy has thus inevitably become linked to money. Everyone does not have the same chance of success, no matter how much hard work they put in. Rather, privilege and money reproduce privilege and money, with the education system as vehicle. The mythical meritocracy provides a smokescreen for reproducing the status quo in terms of the distribution of wealth and power.

Inequality reproduces itself with or without the help of universitiesh3

So, the argument goes, if the meritocracy is a delusion and universities are enabling the delusion, then universities are problematic.

At this stage I want to wave my arms in the air. Isn't the problem the spurious notion of meritocracy rather than universities per se? In which case, isn't that what should be challenged, rather than universities and education?

The power elite has always reproduced itself one way or another. The meritocracy may have superseded the nobility, and might sound more legitimate, but actually promotes unfairness.

The prevailing notions of merit need debunking, but this challenge has to be addressed directly. Defunding universities won't do the job. Inequality would inevitably reinvent itself under some other camouflage.

Rather than undermining universities, shouldn't the focus be on exposing and dismantling the links between the myth of meritocracy and privilege?

Now what?

In sum, the argument against universities, from the right, relies on narrowing their role to conveyor belts for employers and then calling them out when there's a less than perfect fit. The argument from the left is that universities perpetuate inequality under a camouflage of merit. Both arguments can be co-opted to justify funding cuts.

But, neither argument honours the role of universities as centres of creativity, critical analysis, and research. Neither addresses the real issues of developing efficient employment selection processes or dismantling pseudo-meritocracy. Cutting funds to universities will not solve these problems, but will leave us poorer in other ways.