NTNU (og det akademiske Norge) om 10 år
hvis Dag Flaa m/ meningsfeller. får viljen sin?
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
(lang melding, sendes derfor i to porsjoner,
dette er den første).
Australia er kommet mye lenger på den vei som mange
ORGUT-frelste, og kommersielle lobbyister utafor NTNU,
ønsker seg.
Artikkelen under er fra helgebilaget GOOD WEEKEND til
"The Sydney Morning Herald" og
"The Age" - Melbourne, 14/12-99. Den er lang, men ta
deg tid til å lese den. Dette er skremmende perspektiver,
allerede virkelighet i et land som de fleste av av oss vil
tro er et pluralistisk og vel fungerende demokratisk
samfunn. Litt av innholdet:
>- professor fratas epost-forbindelsen etter utsending av kritiske
>merknader når ledelsen bruker universitetsmidler til å leie
>VIP-losje på et idrettsstadion for universitetets næringslivs-sponsorer.
>
>- emeritus mister sin kontorplass etter å ha tatt ordet på
>allmøte, mot fjerning av budsjettmidler til humaniora-fag.
>
>- universiteter vedtar "retningslinjer for oppførsel" som bl.a.
>begrenser akademisk ansattes frihet i offentlig debatt.
(Artikkelen er forøvrig et glimrende stykke journalistikk.
Vi ser knapt tilsvarende i Norge).
Trond Andresen
*********************************************
University Inc
By PETER ELLINGSEN
Tuesday 14 December 1999
+++ Students as "clients", cost-conscious vice-chancellors as CEOs
[ CEO = Chief Executive Officer = konsernsjef, -T.A.], courses
in supermarket management ... universities are looking more like businesses
every day. And as those academics who protest soon learn, loyalty to the
firm means keeping your mouth shut - or else. Welcome to the corporate
campus. +++
It is unsettling to encounter a 61-year-old scholar afraid to speak his mind. You
look and listen, wondering where the threat is coming from. But all you find, amid
the fraying-at-the-edges fittings of a modern university, is the gentle swish of
air-con. Why is this tenured academic - in philosophy, of all things - terrified to let
fly?
John Jenkin, as far as I can tell, is not paranoid, nor is he a spook. So why is he
running a jittery hand through his grey hair and fretting about reprisals? After 40
years in higher education, the La Trobe University reader should be prepared to
publish and be damned. Instead, he removes his glasses, and says, "There are
things I'd like to say, but it could affect my retirement." Jenkin is not a meek man.
He went on radio last year to protest the closure of La Trobe's music department.
That led, he says, to mutterings from management. Now he is worried about the
clause in his contract that says he must not "generate adverse publicity".
Welcome to the brave new world of the corporate university. John Jenkin believes
his future will be at risk if he speaks out, and he is not the only one. On the third
floor of a metal- clad building in Sydney's east, a researcher asks not to be named
because it could threaten his job. "We just get edicts out of the ether," he says,
"and worry about being made redundant." He is one of 28 academics in the
University of New South Wales's well-respected Social Policy Research Centre.
But since Federal Cabinet put the centre's funding up for tender, he and others are
running scared. The fear is that they will upset a government already miffed by the
centre's research which found that welfare is letting down thousands of families.
The groundbreaking research, the most expensive commissioned by the
Department of Social Security, took the centre two-and-a-half years to complete
and cost up to $1 million of taxpayers' money. But it was not welcomed by the
Howard Government [Regjeringskoalisjonen domineres av
"The Liberals", som etter norsk målestokk er et parti
noe til høyre for Høyre, -T.A.], which greeted the first hard
evidence that Canberra [synonym for "regjeringa", -T.A.] is failing
the poor by issuing a four-paragraph statement at the peak of last year's
waterfront war [en stor havnearbeiderstreik, T.A.].
The centre has now been told that its $1 million-plus contract, which has been
automatically renewed every five years since the early 1980s,
is up for grabs. As well, its ability to initiate research, rather than just puddle about
in ponds approved by the government, is in question. "It was our independence
that made us attractive to top researchers. Now that is in doubt," one insider
explained. "Academic freedom? It is getting very hard to find."
Indeed, and not just in the big research centres. Here is an incomplete list of recent
attempts to gag or sideline academics:
*The University of NSW [New South Wales, den delstaten hvor Sydney
ligger, T.A.] warned Professor Clive Kessler against writing letters to
newspapers after The Sydney Morning Herald ran his views on the role of the
NSW State Governor.
*Prime Minister Howard blocked the appointment of Deakin University professor
Jan Carter, an advocate for the under-privileged, as director of the Australian
Institute of Family Studies.
*Melbourne University Press refused to publish a book, edited by philosophy
professor Tony Coady, which criticised the creeping corporatisation of
universities.
*Victoria University of Technology suspended the e-mail access of Professor
Allan Patience, citing concerns about defamation, after he ridiculed a decision by
the administration to splurge $100,000-plus on a corporate box at a sports
stadium.
*Monash University attempted to evict Emeritus Professor John Legge from his
office after he spoke up at a staff meeting in protest against the withdrawal of
funds for the study of humanities.
This sort of interference is viewed as part of a widespread, often disguised,
attempt to box in Australia's best brains at a time when, some believe, universities
are poised to lose their degree-conferring monopoly. While attention has lately
focused on Education Minister David Kemp's proposal to lift fees and introduce
commercial rates of interest for student loans, an equally explosive step - allowing
businesses to confer degrees - is pending. According to Professor David
Robinson, Monash University vice-chancellor and convenor of the Group of 8 -
the old sandstone universities - the Government's move towards deregulation
means that an accounting or engineering firm could soon compete with
universities for public funds to run degree courses.
"The money could go anywhere," he says.
"A student wants an accounting degree? Perhaps KPMG will be able to confer it."
If the club is opened up in this way, as Robinson and other vice-chancellors
suspect it may be, the higher-education tax dollar will flow to private groups
offering vocational training, and universities will become just another business.
The key universities may be, as Robinson says, "jewels beyond value", but they
are losing their sheen. Budget cuts already mean they have lost their edge; now
they are in danger of losing their rationale. "The system is falling behind the best in
the world," Robinson says. "If we don't value them enough, major universities will
have to shut up shop."
The unprecedented threat comes as bureaucratic Big Brother is also constraining
intellectual independence. A generation after George Orwell predicted it in his
novel 1984, universities are being turned into cringe factories, where managerial
newsspeak, rather than scholarly curiosity, sets the tone. John Jenkin, who is
qualified in physics as well as philosophy, and joined the university because it
promised a life of the mind, is being asked to tout for business and toe an
increasingly servile line. "We've just had a university code of conduct imposed on
us, and it's very unpalatable," he says.
After angry protests, the code was toned down recently to make it less offensive.
But the problem remains. Rather than being encouraged to contribute to the public
debate, academics are being prohibited from speaking about anything other than
that which the administration deems to be their specialty. If such censorship had
been applied at America's Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), we
would never have heard linguist Noam Chomsky's influential critique of the West's
neglect of East Timor.
As Robert Manne, a La Trobe associate professor in politics, points out: "Our
radicals have either gone to water or settled into grumpy silence. It's hard to say
why. Fear, material comfort, family." The timidity, Manne suspects, is linked to a
power shift in which a new caste of administrators headed by corporate-style
vice-chancellors has taken the place of colleges of academics. Instead of focusing
on teaching and research, academics now are required to churn out performance
indicators, statistics that are, he says, often misleading. Much of their day is
swallowed by "self-boosting" and filling in forms.
Academics are encouraged to think of their students as "clients" and to teach as
many of them as efficiently as possible. "In such an atmosphere," Manne says,
"the cultivation of friendly relations between teacher and student is becoming
rarer. From a rational economics point of view, idle conversation with clients is a
misuse of scarce resources. From an educational point of view, nothing is of
greater worth."
Together with cuts that have taken nearly $1 billion out of tertiary education in
three years, and a brain drain which sees some of the most gifted flee to jobs
abroad, the corporatisation and the bullying have left many universities tumbling
towards mediocrity.
The problem is money and a business culture that is corrosive for learning and
research.
Vice-chancellors and staff agree that because Canberra is unwilling to pay for a
top-class system, it is creating a dilapidated one. It is rickety, fearful and, as
Simon Kent of the National Tertiary Education Union says, it is vandalising
academic integrity by being "intolerant of dissent".
Consider the case of Professor Allan Patience. Earlier this year, after attending a
meeting of the Victoria University of Technology council, he informed colleagues
of an administration scheme to spend more than $100,000 a year on a corporate
box at Melbourne's new Docklands stadium. There were some jocular comments -
he referred to "boyos at the top" and described vice-chancellor Professor Jarlath
Ronayne's report as "self-congratulatory" - but nothing, you would have thought,
to get too excited about.
Two days later, Ronayne phoned to convey his disappointment at the
"undergraduate" tone of the e-mail report to staff. According to Patience, Ronayne
said he had "embarrassed the university by releasing confidential information".
Patience appealed to the chancellor, Peter Laver, defending his actions - he was,
after all, the staff representative and the only elected academic member of the
council, and his job was to keep staff informed.
Expecting the chancellor to set the record straight, Patience wrote to the
chancellor of "wild rumours" that he, Patience, was about to be silenced or
sacked, or - and this seemed more like a page from a spy novel - have his e-mail
monitored. Five days later, Ronayne revoked his access to the university's e-mail
service. "In particular, you may not use global e-mail to communicate with staff of
the university under any circumstances," the vice-chancellor said.
Given the importance of e-mail (it was, after all, invented so that academics could
talk to each other), this was serious. Ronayne followed up with claims that
Patience had infringed information technology (IT) regulations and mentioned the
possibility of a defamation action as a result of quips Patience had made about
fellow council members in his e-mail.
Patience, who is 54, could not believe the pressure. His employer demanded a
written guarantee that he would abide by the university's IT rules. But since he did
not think he had breached them, he refused. At no time, he says, was he given a
chance to answer the charges, nor was he "allowed access to due process, or
legal advice from university authorities". It was a nightmare, and it would not go
away.
Eventually Patience had his e-mail restored, but he no longer sends out anything
significant or sensitive.
Ronayne told Good Weekend that his decision to remove Patience's e-mail access
had nothing to do with the corporate box (which Victoria University of
Technology claims will turn a profit and help promote its physical education and
recreation degree), but was an attempt to "protect" the university in the event of a
defamation action.
He acknowledged that he was "unaware of any intention by those who may have
been defamed to take legal action", but said he had obtained a legal opinion and
informed Patience of it. Patience says he believes the threat remains and is kept
alive to silence him. Not only that: his application for study leave overseas to
research Australian foreign policy, a subject well within his expertise as professor
of politics and Asian studies, was, Patience says, initially refused. After inquiries
from Good Weekend, a university spokesperson said the study leave request
would be approved.
A leaked document from the university's senior media officer, Ping Chew, to the
vice-chancellor reveals some of the sensitivities involved. Outlining Good
Weekend's inquiries, Ping informs the vice-chancellor: "I believe we should
respond and clarify the university's position by putting a positive spin on the
issue."
Even though John Jenkin and his colleagues organised the painting of their
department, it is hard not to sense despair in the philosophy common room. It
hovers like an illness, eating into morale and making lively discussion, the engine
of inventive research, elusive. Jenkin, who is attempting to write a history of
science in Australia, shrugs. "Despite the flowery lingo," he says, "the code of
conduct is to intimidate staff, to shut them up."
...........
.... (forts. i neste epost-melding)
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