Abstract
The predicament facing the university is the subject of this book. Collini recognises that the university has come under formidable political and economic pressures to justify itself in utilitarian and instrumental terms. He is sensitive to the fact that institutions of higher education have responded to these pressures by justifying their role through a language that misrepresents ‘the true purpose and value of much of what is done in universities’ (p. 94). He writes eloquently of the culture of bad faith that pervades the prevailing institutional life – one where many British academics ‘feel obliged to speak an alien language’ and publish research in accordance with a ‘template drawn up in accordance with regulatory criteria’ (pp. 94–5).
The narrative of bad faith that dominates university life indicates that its norms and values are increasingly shaped by forces that are external to it. In such circumstances it is necessary to stand back and elaborate a counter-narrative, one that insists that the scholarly and intellectual dimensions of academic life are logically prior to the many other concerns to which the university must attend. As Collini hints, in the era of the ‘global multiuniversity’, the very heterogeneity of a massively extended system of higher education demands that instead of seeking refuge in the answers of the past we develop an account appropriate for contemporary times.
Collini appears to assume that the principle obstacle to elaborating such an account is the influence of the 19th century ideal of the liberal university and autonomy. He is particularly irritated by those who ‘nostalgically or defiantly’ cling to the ‘values of the good old days’ (p. 41). He dismisses what he perceives as the empty rhetoric of Cardinal Newman’s 19th-century classic, The Idea of a University, and those who are still inspired by it. Collini is of course right to warn about the futility of substituting nostalgia for a realistic appraisal of the past. However, in his desire to distance himself from the bad old days of the elitist university system, unfortunately he overlooks the continuing relevance of some its core principles.
One the foundational principles of the university is that of autonomy. Collini rightly argues that, historically, institutional autonomy has always been compromised by economic and political realities. However, the tension between the reality of practical life and the ideal of institutional and professional autonomy does not negate the value of the principle. The exercise and realisation of autonomy is always subject to conflicting interests and pressures. And yet without the influence of ideals associated with autonomy – the pursuit of knowledge as its own end, disinterested research, open-ended experimentation – the content of academic life diminishes. Indeed, it is the very obstacles that stand in the way of the realisation of autonomy that underline the continuing significance of this ideal for the university.
Collini represents Newman as an unaccountably successful windbag, who somehow continues to influence the debate on the university. He claims that the ideal that Newman ‘conjures up is beguiling’ but also ‘peculiarly contentless’ (p. 50). He goes to great length to deride Newman’s ‘silly prose’ for its rhetorical excesses and his ‘rhetorical overkill’ (pp. 48–52). No doubt Newman, a Catholic theologian writing for a religious audience, used a narrative that is inconsistent with the rigour of scientific or philosophical logic. As Collini himself recognises, Newman’s critique of utilitarian education was informed by his objective of offering an alternative meaning to life (p. 52).
However, what Collini really dislikes about Newman is not simply his rhetoric but also his alleged tendency to overstate the argument for non-utilitarian and non-instrumental education. He particularly objects to Newman’s tendency to emphasise the significance of education in cultivating character and the public mind. Newman’s apotheosis of the university does sound strange and even naive to our 21st-century secular imagination. Nevertheless, arguably, at a time when education is frequently interpreted as a skill and when the integrity of academic life is dominated by a narrow instrumental ethos, Newman’s warnings about going down the road of utilitarian education can appear prescient and compelling.
Despite his disdain for Newman’s arguments, Collini recognises that his opponent is no mere charlatan. The very fact that he feels obliged to criticise a ‘deliberately archaic treatise’ indicates that Newman’s arguments still matter (p. 41). Collini is not quite clear why this 19th-century cleric continues to be cited in the debates. He ungenerously implies that the ‘persistence’ of ‘pre-capitalist cultural attitudes’ must be linked to the influence of elitist attitudes towards the university. ‘Snobbery and social exclusiveness played their part here’, he remarks (p. 94). Yet the fact that the university was historically associated with elitist privilege is not an argument against some of the values that inspired it in the past. The necessity of eliminating narrow privilege can and must coexist with upholding and developing elements of the ethos that originally inspired the liberal ideal of education.
What Collini has characterised as the ‘remarkable longevity of Newman’s book’ probably says more about the problem of giving meaning to the 21st-century university than anything else (p. 27), which is why Collini concludes by recognising that the ‘twenty-first century university needs a literary voice of comparable power’ to that of Newman to begin to answer the question of what is the purpose of the university (p. 60). True. But it also requires a willingness to uphold an academic ethos that runs counter to the dominant utilitarianian and social engineering cultural currents of our times.