Value and the Humanities

Front matter

Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Economics

Series Editors Paul Crosthwaite School of Literatures, Languages & Culture University of Edinburgh Edinburgh, UK

Peter Knight Department of English and American Studies University of Manchester Manchester, UK

Preface

This book was motivated by the changes to higher education that took place during my time as an undergraduate student (2009-12). It was a period of rapid transformation and uncertainty within universities in England. Public debate was dominated by a reappraisal of the economics of education. How much should tuition cost? Who would pay for it? Who benefits from universities? Within the context of the shifting ownership of student debt and the reconsideration of research assessment criteria, little attention was being paid to a far more important question: what is the value of a university education? This project arose from the belief that the notion of value should not always have to be measured in economic terms. The foundations for this project were established in 2012, as I began to research the extent to which alternative languages of value were being subsumed by the econocratic rhetoric of higher education policy.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights acknowledges education as a fundamental means through which to achieve “understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups” (1948). These are qualities that are nurtured by a liberal education. However, recent policy has overlooked the ways in which the humanities contribute to the wellbeing of society through their critically, culturally, and historically aware practices. In present policy, the value of higher education is defined vi PREFACE by the creation of profit instead of the cultivation of people. Personally witnessing the changes in higher education from 2008 to 2018 made this neoliberal approach explicit. I found myself wondering, how did we get from liberal education to neoliberal education?

Manchester, UK Zoe Hope Bulaitis

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book was the product of nearly a decade spent within the English Department at the University of Exeter (2009-18). Thank you to all who have helped to shape my intellectual foundations during this time. I am particularly grateful to Chris Campbell, Karen Edwards, Sam Goodman, Matt Hayler, Sinéad Moynihan, Vike Plock, Florian Stadtler, Paul Williams, and Paul Young for their help, friendship, and individual forms of intellectual brilliance. Iam indebted to my doctoral supervisory team, Regenia Gagnier and Sian Harris, for their expertise and encouragement throughout the PhD process. Thank you both for teaching me how to be a strong female academic. Thanks also to my students who have been a persistent delight and inspiration. The hours spent in the classroom with you all renews my hope for the value of the humanities in the neoliberal university; don’t let the system grind you down!

This book is also the product of intellectual exchanges I have had with friends and colleagues I have met through my affiliations at ENRESSH, ECHIC, BAAS, and BACLS. Countless supportive conversations are woven into the fabric of this book. In particular, thanks to Paul Benneworth for inviting me into a wider interdisciplinary conversation at ENRESSH, for the BACLS executive committee (all of you) for helping me think through writing about ‘now’, and to Silvana Colella for your relentless advocacy for the value of the humanities in Europe. You are all the gold standard of academic collegiality, thank you so much.

The research for this book was punctuated by two trips around the world, thanks to Semester at Sea and the University of Virginia. The serenity of the ocean gave me space to think and the intellectual company viii © ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS opened my mind to new horizons. My sincere thanks go to Simon Gatrell, Margaret McCann, Patrick Murphy, and Chandra Ranade for many enlightening conversations. I learnt that there’s no ship like a friendship, thanks to Jess, Paula, Adam, Josh, Kayte, Todd, Andy, Kylie, Lindsay, Susan, Theresa, Lisa, Mark, Steph, Cat, and Jeff. You made drinking coffee brewed from recycled seawater almost enjoyable. My sincere gratitude to Victor Luftig, the best academic Dean that I’ve ever known and not a bad rapper either.

This book is also built on excellent friendships with people who don’t live on boats, without whom I would have relinquished hope long ago. I want to express my gratitude to e Sarah Daw, for your belief that we could do this, for your strength and solidarity.

e Katie Garrod, for your positivity and for being an inspirational teacher.

Jack Griffiths, my favourite philosopher.

e James Tyndall, who is a ray of sunshine, always.

Although the bulk of the research and writing for this book was undertaken at the University of Exeter, my thanks also go to Aidan Byrne and Frank Wilson at the University of Wolverhampton and to Dorothy Butchard, Amy Burge, Melissa Dickson, Deborah Longworth, Rebecca Mitchell, Fariha Shaikh, and Rachel Sykes at the University of Birmingham. You all kept the flame of this book alive in the hinterland of finishing the PhD and moving halfway across the country. This book is a testament to your support and friendship in the middle space.

Thank you to the University of Manchester’s Research Support Fund for early career researchers for covering the costs associated with image copyright and reproductions. Finally, immense thanks to the Open Access Research team at the University of Exeter (shout out to Imogen Ward- Smith) for funding the costs associated with Open Access for this monograph. It was my ambition that this book should be read by anyone interested in it, and your support has made this possible. My sincere gratitude to the editorial team at Palgrave in New York, Allie Troyanos and Rachel Jacobe, for making their advice, patience, and expertise. It has been wonderful to work with you both.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix

This book is dedicated to the following people:

To my parents, for teaching me that I could do anything I put my mind to and for reading me books before I could do it for myself. Thank you for believing in me every step of the way.

To Anne and Keith, for your endless spring of support, encouragement, and enthusiasm throughout this process, it has meant so much.

To Regenia, you are an incredibly inspiring mentor and teacher. Thank you for upholding those values of education that I cherish the most, for your honesty, for your integrity, and for your generosity of spirit.

To Richard, thank you for being my partner on this lifelong journey. You brighten all of my days and I am forever grateful for everything you do to support me.

CONTENTS l1 Introduction id

1.2

1.4

Part I: The State of the Debate 1.1.1 Critical University Studies

1.1.2 The Public Value of the Humanities

1.1.3 Social Impact Studies

1.1.4 New Contributions

Part II: The Relationship with the Past: From Liberal to Neoliberal Education 1.2.1 Describing 2008-18 as the Present Moment in

Higher Education

1.2.2 Economic Value as a Monoculture Under Neoliberalism

1.2.3 The Dominance of Economic Value Within Higher Education

1.2.4 Arguing Against Crisis in the Humanities

Part IIT: From Liberal to Neoliberal Education

1.3.1 Articulating the Values of a Liberal Education

1.3.2 Speaking of Liberal Values in the Neoliberal University

Part IV: Chapter Synopses

1.4.1 How Can Critically Reading Policy Help Scholars Understand a Culture of Economism?

1.4.2 How Does Debate Between the Humanities and the

Sciences Create Meaning?

NO Q ob wh xii CONTENTS

1.4.3 How Can Fiction Act as a Reflective Tool for Articulating Value? 1.44 How Are the Academic Humanities Connected to Other Cultural Institutions?

Bibliography

A History of Payment by Results: Lowe’s Code (1862) and the Browne Report (2010) 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Part I: Lowe’s Code 2.2.1 The Newcastle Commission 2.2.2 Robert Lowe and Economic Motivations 2.2.3. Critical Responses to Payment by Results 2.3 Part I: The Browne Report 2.3.1 Contextualising the Browne Report: The Move Towards Minimal Government Involvement in Higher Education 2.3.2 National Economic Motivations 2.3.3 National Gains: The Debate Concerning Tangible Knowledge 2.3.4 The Rise of Individualism and the Student as Consumer 2.4 Conclusion Bibliography

Controversy and Conversation: The Relationship Between the Humanities and the Sciences 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Part I: Policy and the Relationship Between the Disciplines 3.2.1 Present Policy Preferences 3.2.2 A Brief History of an Age-Old Argument 3.3 Part I: The “Two Cultures Controversy”, Then and Now 3.3.1 The Birth of a Controversy 3.3.2 The Form of the Debate 3.3.3. The Two Cultures Today 3.4 Part I: A Liberal Valuation: Arnold and Huxley’s Exchange 3.4.1 The Start of a Conversation

CONTENTS xiii

3.42 “Darwin’s Bulldog” and “Our Chief Apostle of Culture” 100 3.4.3 Articulating the Value of a Liberal Education 102 3.4.4 Conclusion 104 Bibliography 107

The Relationship Between Academic Fiction and Academic Life 113 4.1 Introduction 113 4.2 Part I: Using Academic Fiction as a Discursive Tool 114 4.3 Part I: Defining Academic Fiction 117 4.3.1 Understanding the Appeal of Academic Fiction 117 4.3.2 Situation and Settings for the Academic Novel 121 4.3.3 Subject Matter and Style in Academic Fiction 125 4.4 Part II: Investigation One: The Qualities of a Liberal Education 128 4.4.1 The Qualities of an Education in Tom Brown at Oxford 129 4.4.2 The Secret History: A Classical Education Out of Time 134 4.4.3 Assessing the Value of the Humanities in Novels That Engage with Educational Principles from the Past 141 4.5 Part IV: Investigation Two: Representing the Processes of Humanities Research 142 4.5.1 Middlemarch and the Pursuit of The Key to All Mythologies 143 4.5.2 Possession and the Processes of Scholarship 148 4.5.3 Assessing the Value of the Humanities in Novels That Explore the Process of Writing and Research 151 4.6 Part V: Investigation Three: Pressures of Economics in Education 153 4.6.1 Jude the Obscure and Barriers to Education 153 4.6.2 Frank Parkin’s The Mind and Body Shop: Everything for Sale 157 4.6.3 The Future of a Liberal Education in Zadie Smith's On Beauty 162 4.7 Conclusion 166 Bibliography 167 xiv

Contents

Impact and the Humanities: The Rise of Accountability in Public Cultural Life 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Part I: Debates in Public Access, Use, and Accountability in the Victorian Museum 5.2.1 Defining Foucauldian Governmentality 5.2.2 National Interests in the Public Museum: Governance and Powers of Display 5.2.3 The British Museum: The Rise of Debates in Public

5.2.4 The Rise of Accountability: Quantification as Justification in the Victorian Museum 5.2.5 Conclusions, Regarding the Victorian Public Museum 5.3 Part I: Public Expenditure and Public Values 5.3.1 “There Is No Alternative”: The Rise of Economic Models of Valuation in the Cultural Sector 5.3.2 New Public Management 5.3.3 Responses from the Cultural Sector 5.3.4 The Arts and the Economy Embrotled: The Rise of the Creative Industries 5.4 Part II: REF-Lections for the Academic Humanities 5.4.1 Reinforcing National Interests Within the Impact Agenda 5.4.2 The Focus on Outputs and Impacts Misrepresents the Value of the Humanities 5.4.3 “The System Does Not Speak for Me” 5.4.4 The Humanities and the Creative Industries 55 aid i V: A Response from the Humanities

Conclusion

6.2 Part I: Reflections on Questions of Value 6.3 Part I: Future Directions for Research

177 Ler

183 184

186 190 198

201 202

203 204 206

212 217

219 221 223 225 229 231

241 241 241 243

CONTENTS xv

6.4 Part LI: Voices of the Humanities, and a Call to Arms 245 6.5 Part IV: The Need for the Humanities in an Age

of Populism 246 Bibliography 247

Fig.

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Fig.

Fig.

Fig.

2.1

2.3

2.4

4.1

4.2

5.2

LIST OF FIGURES

University application rates for English 18-year-olds between

2006 and 2017. (Graph source: “UCAS Application Results by

the January Deadline 2017 cycle.” UCAS Analysis and

Research, February 2017, 12) 66 Percentage change in total applications by subject group from

2012 to 2013. (Graph authors own, data source: “End of Cycle

2017 Data Resources.” UCAS Analysis and Research, January

2018) 67 Percentage change in total UCAS applications by subject group

from 2013 to 2014. (Graph authors own, data source: “End of

Cycle 2017 Data Resources.” UCAS Analysis and Research,

January 2018) 68 UCAS Humanities Subject Applications 2008-14, Number of Applicants. (Graph authors own, data source: “January Deadline Analysis: Subjects.” UCAS Analysis and Research,

30 January 2015) 70 “The Most Desired Jobs in Britain.” YouGov UK Survey,

12-13 January 2015 120 Laurie Taylor. “Greetings From Your Vice-Chancellor.” Times

Higher Education, | January 2015 159 A blank entrance ticket to the British Museum from 1776.

Image source: The British Museum 193 John Tenniel. “The Sunday Question. The Public House; or,

The House For the Public?” Punch, 17 April 1869 200

Proportion of jobs by highest level of qualification in the Creative Economy in 2014. (Source: DCMS, 15 June 2015) 224

Introduction

This book responds to the proposition that the value of higher education can be reduced to a singular scale: the economic market. In Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative, Mark Fisher describes how, over the past thirty years, capitalist realism has successfully installed a ‘business ontology’ in which it is simply obvious that everything in society, including healthcare and education, should be run as a business [... ] emancipatory politics must destroy the appearance of a ‘natural order’, must reveal what is presented as necessary and inevitable to be mere contingency, just as it must make what was previously deemed to be impossible attainable. (2009, 17)

This book takes up Fisher’s commentary and challenge to such economic inevitabilities, in evidencing how higher education policy between 2008 and 2018 reformed both the management and financing of higher education in England through adopting a “business ontology” (2009, 17). The Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance (2009-10), commonly known as the Browne Review, concluded that universities “must persuade students that they should ‘pay more’ in order to ‘get more’. The money will follow the student” (Browne 2010, 4). Under these conditions, a university degree became a product valued at the level of the individual consumer. Increasingly, the value of research has also been configured primarily as an asset to economic growth, an indicator of the competitiveness of a university, or in terms of its demonstrable societal

© The Author(s) 2020 1 Z. H. Bulaitis, Value and the Humanities, Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Economics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37892-9_1 impact. The language of the Research Excellence Framework (REE henceforth) conceives of disciplinary departments as ‘units of assessment’ and scholarly writing as an ‘output’ that can be attributed a star rating. This book sets out to understand how the wider values of the humanities can be articulated within such an econocratic context. In order to achieve this, I construct and present a narrative history of how the present rhetoric and rationale has come to overshadow alternative approaches to valuation.

Historicising in the present moment is a political act. I propose that if scholars hope to address the changes occurring in the contemporary academy, they need to be able to better articulate the value of the humanities beyond the marketplace of higher education. Therefore, rather than writing a singular defence of the humanities against contemporary economic rationalism, this book proposes a kaleidoscopic range of ways in which value is manifested, each of which offers a different perspective on the present debate. Placing contemporary neoliberal higher education within a far longer history of liberal education reveals that “what is presented as necessary and inevitable to be mere contingency” (Fisher 2009, 17). Throughout this book, I place narratives of value in humanities scholarship between 2008 and 2018 in dialogue with nineteenth-century debates concerning liberal education, in order to demonstrate that the may value is articulated is as significant as what values are articulated. I address the following broad questions facing the humanities, exploring the contextual and historical contingencies of value: what are the differences between liberal and neoliberal education? How can critically reading policy help scholars understand a culture of economism? How does debate between the humanities and the sciences create meaning? How can fiction act as a reflective tool for articulating value? How are the academic humanities connected to other cultural institutions? These questions map directly onto the five substantive chapters of this book.

In the words of Toni Morrison, “definitions belong to the definers — not the defined” (1987, 190). With this in mind, I emphasise how selfarticulation of what it is that the humanities actually ‘do’ can enrich the debate. My contribution pragmatically traces how the value of the humanities is expressed in the daily actions, language, and experiences of higher education. I argue that focusing on what scholars say, what they do, and how they articulate the value of their work, reveals that which policy neglects. In the spirit of communication rather than defence, this book favours the word ‘articulate’ in place of ‘justify’. The semantic distinction between these two terms is outlined in Poul Holm et al.’s World Humanities Report 2015:

by articulating, we mean explaining and differentiating the [...] values or benefits humanities research is thought to have [...] justifying the humanities is subtly different as it involves defending the humanities in the face of a challenge. Unlike articulation, justification is self-consciously rhetorical. There are potentially hostile audiences to consider, for instance: politicians nervous of their budgets; people who consider STEM subjects worth funding but struggle to see the point of the humanities. (2015, 38-39)

Articulating value through a demonstration of humanities practices resists being coerced into a reactive position against economics. Despite recent policy that encourages higher education to be entirely motivated by fiscal targets, the humanities continue to inspire and aspire beyond these limits. Who should define the humanities? Where do we draw the lines of disciplinary definition? How do our humanities differ from institutional definitions in the past? The inspiration for this book is the challenging question of how to articulate the value of, rather than to defend and define, the humanities within the neoliberal university.

Therefore, throughout this book, I suggest that it is necessary to pursue not just one but many alternative routes to the valuation of the humanities. Accordingly, the chapters each present a different route and representation of value. This heterogeneity is appropriate given that the work of the humanities is multi-faceted. As the pluralised word ‘humanities’ indicates, there is not one study of ‘humanity’. Instead, this book considers a series of diverse relationships which collectively form a collage of mutually reinforcing values. In doing so, I follow my belief that the humanities must embrace non-hierarchical and open-ended practices. An articulation of the value of the humanities encompasses the lives, ideas, and values of people as opposed to their instrumental use as products.

1.1 Part I: THE STATE OF THE DEBATE

I am not the first to argue that economic value is a poor measurement of the benefit of the humanities, both in terms of teaching and research. The value of the humanities has been studied across a wide range of academic disciplines including critical theory, literary and cultural studies, history, education, and sociology. This book connects philosophical debates with political effects in order to develop a critical approach to articulating educational value.'! The specificity of contemporary marketisation of value in higher education has led to a recent proliferation of specialist scholarship. There are three main research communities in this area: critical university studies, defences of the public value of the humanities, and social impact studies. I briefly summarise each below in order to assist readers in situating this book within the wider corpus.

1.1.1 Critical University Studies

Jeffrey Williams coined the term ‘critical university studies’ in 2012. Writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Williams defined a field that focused “on the consequences of corporate methods and goals” and “scrutinize[s] central social institutions” (2012, 7). The work now recognised as critical university studies began in the 1990s as an interrogation of the management of educational institutions and attempts to uncover the effects of systems that promote economic valuation culture.? More recently, the focus has turned from the criticism of knowledge-exchange practices to a wider commentary concerning the decline of the public good of education. Since 2008, critical university studies have sought to demonstrate the “pressing need not only to diagnose what’s happening but also to oppose changes that go against the public interest” (Williams 2012, 8).* Although critical university studies were founded in the US context, it has become increasingly applicable within the English higher education system after the changes to undergraduate funding in 2010.* Changes to education policy in the late 2000s acted as the stimulus for the present debate in English universities. As McGettigan observes “now is the time to set out what agenda the government has been pursuing, how it has been pursued without democratic mandate or oversight, and how it is being extended

1 As a result, this study is indebted to the work of Matthew Arnold, Raymond Williams, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu as well as others within the tradition of critical theory.

? Williams identifies how the approach was instigated in Readings, B. The University in Ruins (1996) and Slaughter and Leslie’s Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University (1997), both of which critique the marketisation of higher education in the US context using similar methods.

3 This approach is exemplified in Menand, L. The Marketplace of Ideas (2010), Newfield, C. Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class (2008) and Bousquet, M. How the University Works (2008).

4See Collini, S. often cited article “Browne’s Gamble” (2010), McGettigan, A. The Great University Gamble: Money, Markets, and the Future of Higher Education (2013), and Ball, S. The Education Debate (2013).

without parliamentary scrutiny” (2013, 2). This book develops such styles of scholarship, through critiquing and undermining the naturalised processes of economisation. However, I argue that the exploration of alternative sites for valuation beyond the market is an underdeveloped area in critical university studies. In order to redress this gap, this book contributes specific examples of ways to articulate the potential of non-economic values of the humanities, rather than solely critiquing the current economic mode.

1.1.2 The Public Value of the Humanities

Since 2008 there have been a number of edited collections from various disciplines that have concentrated on the public good of the humanities. The Public Value of the Humanities (2011), edited by Jonathan Bate, features responses from over thirty academics who address the influences of marketisation and financial cuts to higher education in the UK. The Humanities and Public Life (2014), edited by Peter Brooks and Hilary Jewett, provides philosophical reflections upon the public value of the humanities from leading literary, cultural, and critical theorists. The year 2011 saw the publication of three edited collections framed as political manifestos against the marketisation of higher education in England: A Manifesto for the Public University, edited by John Holmwood, The Assault on Universities: A Manifesto for Resistance, edited by Michael Bailey and Des Freeman, and For the University: Democracy and the Future of the Institution, edited by Thomas Docherty.’

Such wealth of recent publications testifies to the influence of the post-2010 policy developments. These works draw together a community of concern and the multiplicity of responses indicates the depth of feeling, despite many of the authors not having a research background in economic policy, history of education, or critiques of neoliberalism that this study develops. Rather than reproducing these arguments that, like critical university studies, are framed in response to the economic imperative, this book adopts a less reactive stance in resisting the language of crisis or ‘war’.’? The presence of these edited collections demonstrates the wide

5 The collection includes essays by Judith Butler, Elaine Scarry, Patricia J. Williams and Jonathan Lear, among others.

é This advocacy work continues, as seen in Ladkin et al. (2016) and Watts, R. (2017).

7 Book titles invoking such violent imagery are common, see Bérubé and Nelson (1995) Higher Education Under Fire, Giroux, H. (2014) Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education;

community of scholars who are concerned by the changes to higher education. A plurality of responses should be recognised as a positive occurrence that is indicative of a wider resilience and resistance to the challenges facing the values of higher education. However, the need for ongoing enquiry is vital, as these collected editions are now several years old. A wider consideration of the public humanities in the twenty-first century is urgently required, and this book represents but one contribution of one voice.

1.1.3 Social Impact Studies

The third significant area of scholarly debate is found within cultural policymaking and arts management, which explores the social impact of the arts and humanities.’ These interdisciplinary and often applied ideas about the value of the humanities are cited throughout this book and prove particularly significant to the discussion of cultural policy in Chap. 5, which explores the relationship between the management of the humanities and public museums. Most noticeably, the journal Arts and Humanities in Higher Education has maintained a dialogue around value and ‘impact’, including several special issues dedicated to the topic in 2015.° Social impact studies draws attention to interactions between humanities scholars and other social institutions within healthcare, law, education, and culture. Therefore, research in this area helps locate the value of the humanities within wider society and connects to the above discussion of the public humanities at many points. Beyond research, there are a number of organisations that have been established in order to explore the social impact of the humanities. For example, the European Network for Research Evaluation in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (ENRESSH), which explores the consequences of research evaluation criteria from an interdisciplinary perspective and the European Consortium

Docherty, T. (2015) Universities at War; Wright and Shore (2017) Death of the Public University? Uncertain Futures for Higher Education in the Knowledge Economy.

8 Eleonora Belfiore’s work is particularly significant in this regard, from The Cultural Value Initiative project, to her monograph with Oliver Bennett, The Social Impact of the Arts: An Intellectual History (2008), to her edited collection with Anna Upchurch, Humanities in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Utility and Markets (2013).

°See Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, Forum on the Public Value of Arts and Humanities Research (14.1) and Forum on Civic Engagement in the Arts and Humanities (14.3).

for Humanities Institutes and Centres (ECHIC), founded by Rosi Braidotti in 2008, which aims “to speak on behalf of the humanities and develop a language for the (position of) humanities institutes in European universities today” (“Aims” echic.org). This book builds on work I have carried out as an active participant in both networks. Other public institutions, such as the British Academy, have been equally proactive in presenting a case for the social impact of the humanities. For example, their “Past, Present and Future” report provides narrative case studies of beneficial projects and highlights that “there is no simple way of demonstrating the subtle and unexpected ways in which academic disciplines ‘contribute to the vitality of society’” (2010, 5). The growing body of scholarship in this area testifies to the value of the humanities beyond the university as a significant part of contemporary social life.

1.1.4 New Contributions

The three research communities highlighted above provide a significant body of evidence for the value of the humanities; however, this research is presented almost exclusively in relation to economic terms. Writers within critical university studies critique the processes of marketisation and are, therefore, working in direct response to economic governance. Both edited collections, which address the public value of the humanities and scholarship that documents the social impact of research, make concessions to policy demands that knowledge should be justified and made readily accountable. This book consistently pursues a valuation that is humanistic in its approach and aims. The following four chapters construct a valuation of the humanities that is in contact with policy, the sciences, fiction, and public cultural institutions. Throughout, historically aware critical interpretation is offered as a means to avoid repeating well-worn economic defences. I offer articulation in place of justification.

1.2 Part II: THE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE PAST: FROM LIBERAL TO NEOLIBERAL EDUCATION

The subsequent four chapters each draws nineteenth-century educational debates into contact with the present moment, and the remainder of this first introductory chapter directly addresses and initiates this methodological choice. Throughout, I establish an overarching relationship between the value of liberal education in the Victorian past and the value of neoliberal education in the present. Nineteenth-century liberal education sought to cultivate a society of individuals equipped with faculties for making moral choices and living meaningful lives, whereas contemporary neoliberal higher education redefines individuals primarily as consumers of education. There has been a shift whereby the freedom of an individual has been transformed into an individual’s freedom of choice, in a free market of economic opportunity. However, such a linear perspective of history is somewhat misleading. As Dinah Birch explains in Our Victorian Education, “our educational thinking reflects, often without our realizing it, patterns of thought that are rooted in the Victorian period” (2008, 123). Establishing the relationship between liberal and neoliberal education is by no means straightforward, historically, linguistically, politically, or otherwise. Therefore, this introductory chapter establishes a methodology for handling the fissure between liberal and neoliberal education that will be used throughout this book. Although the general critical consensus affirms that the Victorian period was important in the formation of the present systems of governance in education, there has been little investigation into specifically Low these structures and discursive modes came to be adopted into twenty-first-century policymaking. With this in mind, I offer a detailed assessment of the ways in which our Victorian inheritance is partly responsible for the current econocratic context but also bequeaths the contemporary humanities valuable tools for thinking through the present challenges.

1.2.1 Describing 2008-18 as the Present Moment in Higher Education

This project delineates the period of 2008-18 as a period of particular importance within the history of higher education. This timeframe represents a significant watershed in higher education policy in England for two reasons. First, it encompasses the launch of the Browne Review in 2009, which was commissioned to “examine the balance of contributions to higher education funding by taxpayers, students, graduates and employers” (Hansard 2009). Second, it includes the publication of “Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education” (known as the Browne Report) in 2010 and the corresponding white paper “Students at the Heart of the System” the following year, which confirmed the shift from a public to a private funding model for higher education in England based on undergraduate student tuition. These documents proposed significant changes in both the governance and attitude towards the value of higher education, which had long-lasting effects: education was commodified, a market of tuition was established, and students were configured as consumers. The governance of universities in England between 2008 and 2018 has been most largely shaped by the culture (if it can be called that) of the market that these landmark policies enforce.