As schools are for education, so universities are for higher education. In a civilised society, children should leave school literate, numerate and with some knowledge of science, history and culture. But society also needs an elite educated to a higher level. Universities are for the preparation of the next generation of doctors, United Nations interpreters, lawyers, structural engineers, archaeologists, nuclear-weapon designers, literary critics, astronomers, economists and so forth.
That’s the short answer. The long answer would require a great deal more than is found in Stefan Collini’s brisk and very witty book. It would need to range far and wide both historically and geographically, to tell us about the centrality of theology in the medieval university, the political imperative behind the humanist revolution in 16th-century Cambridge, the emergence of the PhD in 19th-century Germany, the relative prestige of the Sorbonne and the École Normale Supérieure, the mixed ecology of the American system in which a first-class undergraduate education can be obtained at a ‘college’ as opposed to a ‘university’, and much more.
Collini touches briefly upon some of these things, but his book is by its own confession essayistic, polemical and opportunist rather than magisterial, balanced and long-cogitated. In an ideal world the Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature at the University of Cambridge (for it is he) would have ten years —or come to that, an entirely scholarly lifetime — to survey a subject such as this.
But the paymasters of the 21st-century professor are the bean-counters in the government’s suggestively named Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (assuming that Michael Gove has not wrested the universities back to the Department of Education before this review reaches print). The quango charged with the distribution of funding periodically conducts a competition, originally called the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and now renamed the Research Excellence Framework (REF), in which sample ‘outputs’ from every professor and lecturer in the land are graded on a scale from zero to four stars, and the money dished out accordingly.
Some call this a responsible, if bureaucratically top-heavy, way of handling public funds (‘taxpayers’ money,’ a phrase about which Collini has several tart things to say). Others think that a system designed to throw money at the stars in the premier league has all sorts of detrimental effects: too much emphasis on research as opposed to teaching, an unseemly scramble to hire the big names and grant-winning research teams, pressure to publish in time for the competition deadline.
The new element that the REF adds to the RAE is ‘impact’: an attempt to give credit to research that goes ‘beyond the ivory towers’ — the scientific advance spun out into a patent, the archaeological discovery showcased in an exhibition. Scientists are deeply anxious that over-emphasis on impact will be detrimental to ‘blue skies research’. They point out that you never know which piece of research will have an effect in the ‘real world’, that lasers and immuno-suppressants and the internet emerged through happenstance.
The scene in Cambridge now becomes clear. It is that time of year when the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research calls everyone in for the one-to-one in which they have to present their four ‘outputs’ for the REF. Collini says that there is no more important question for a professor of intellectual history than that of the function of the university. He is writing the definitive book on the subject, but it will take time. He is fully in command of certain aspects: the precise historical context of Cardinal Newman’s lectures on ‘The Idea of a University,’ the role of local commerce in the emergence of the ‘redbrick’ universities in the north, the misconception that such modern intellectual powerhouses as Sussex and Warwick were the result of the 1963 Robbins Report.
But there are other areas where he needs to do more work. Before even thinking about the international dimension, he will need to get to grips with the Scottish universities during the Enlightenment — the story has always been, and remains, completely different north of the border.
Then he will have to think about the reasons why the venerable Italian tradition of the professor hiring his own pupil has degenerated into a patronage network that has paralysed the higher education sector in the country where universities began. And perhaps apply for a travel grant in order to visit India and find out whether it can really be true that the government is intending to create 1,000 new universities in the next decade.
By this time, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor is drumming his fingers on the table and thinking about the paper he needs to write for the Compliance Committee. ‘So it won’t be out in time for the REF, then, Collini? Never mind the Scots, the Italians and the Indians. I’ll tell you what, everyone’s been talking about those essays you write in the London Review, dissecting the language of the Higher Education White Paper and eviscerating the imposition of business-speak on universities — I’ve even heard two-brain Willetts being provoked by them — so why don’t you cobble those together into a book, make it respectable by adding 100 pages of rumination on Cardinal Newman, the character of the humanities and the idea of a liberal education, and, bingo, you’ll have it out by Christmas.’ The professor raises a quizzical eyebrow: ‘But it won’t be a proper monograph.’ ‘Exactly,’ replies the triumphant Pro-Vice-Chancellor: ‘It will be one of our impact items.’
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