Occupy Warwick: why the commercialisation of education must be stopped

The building and shaping of society takes place in the world of ideas, which is the domain par excellence of the university. Thus, the reasons for last year’s occupation of Warwick University’s campus should not and cannot be detached from the much broader Occupy ‘movement’ that spread around the world in the second half of 2011. The underlying objectives of such ‘movements’ are factually grounded in a common subject matter. The question which they both address is the same and centred on the kind of society we wish to build and live in.

The subtitle of the UK Government’s White Paper (‘Students at the Heart of the System’) summarises the interconnection of the broader Occupation movement rather appropriately. There is little doubt that students are (and ought to be) placed at the heart of the system in this now infamous paper. They are, however, not conceptualised as students but as supposedly ‘willing’ consumers who buy their academic products, only to sell their skills again to the productive workings of the economic system three years later .

This process of ‘economic rationalisation’ leaves little room for Greek or Roman classics, architectural theory or the ‘valueless’ art of philosophy. Salesmen will realistically never be able to sell more copies of Edith Hall’s ‘The Return of Ulysses’ than the latest Steve Jobs biography. According to such a line of reasoning, there should therefore really be no reason to continue subsidising the Philosophy departments of Middlesex, Greenwich or Northampton. Perhaps we can sell history in cartoon form? A society based on for-profit universities and profit optimising education must surely be sustainable?

In the unpublished findings presented in the ‘Independent Review of Higher Education and Student Finance’, which guided the so-called ‘Browne Report’, Opinion Leader reported that participants (including pupils and their parents, prospective and existing students) felt “government contribution to the costs of tuition and support for students… important for a number of reasons”. One of the reasons given was “making higher education accessible to students from a wide range of different backgrounds”. Another reason was that it avoided “a system based on the ability to pay”. “[M]ost full time students and parents believed that the government should pay at least half the cost of higher education… [P]ersonal benefits of higher education were seen by many to match the benefits to society”.

The ideal society that is conceptualised and upheld by the Government has now for years already been one of a very different category. It is no secret that the idea of a ‘Big Society’ (the ‘great passion’ of the current government) is meant to unleash the UK’s ‘entrepreneurial spirit’. This is also Warwick’s ethos and in fact serves as an important component of its ‘ambitious’ ‘Vision 2015’ strategy. It should be no surprise that the University’s Chancellor, Sir Richard Lambert, was responsible for the report that formed the foundation for the Government’s education strategy.

The ‘Lambert Review’ explicitly lobbied for more and greater linkages between universities and businesses and argued for so-called ‘Sector Skills Councils’ to better serve the superior economic logic of supply and demand. The report unambiguously recommended the Higher Education Funding Council to “[c]onsider whether the UK university system is producing the right balance of graduates in the disciplines that the economy needs”. It did not take long before similar reports followed suit. “In each case”, Professor Philip Moriarty (University of Nottingham) writes, “the emphasis was on developing the ‘business-facing character of British universities via the protection rather free dissemination, of scientific knowledge so that it could be commercially exploited as intellectual property”. Sounds familiar?

The corporatist ideal for a ‘Big Society’ has recently also made its appearance in the Arts and Humanities Research Council which unashamedly promoted it as one of the six strategic research priorities for which ‘significant’ resources would be made available. The transition towards an aggressive form of academic corporatism has been opposed by those whose research is not suitable for commodification. There is however little hope for alternative visions of society since we are told that ‘there is no alternative’.

Those conditions need instead to be created for alternative roadmaps to again become visible. The Alternative White Paper, drafted by academics and students, and the demonstrations that continue to take place form important steps in the creation of a situation which makes alternatives possible. The appropriation of space at Warwick was as such therefore not a mere protest against cuts but a visualisation of a different university and an aspiration for an alternative society. A society and a university which are, in other words, open, critical, diverse and democratic regardless of the economic background, interest and class of citizens and students.