Profit trumps Plato in the consumer-driven university

SUBORDINATING humanities to student whim threatens the kind of education that sustains democracy.

WE live in an age of enlightenment but not an enlightened age. Governmental reforms have reshaped the modern university by changing the character of the student. Superseding the traditional ideal of the university graduate as practised in the art of liberal democratic citizenship is the student-consumer, filled with an education whose value is measured, like junk food, by the quantity and satisfaction with the act of consumption.

The new student-consumer is at the heart of the British conservative government's white paper on higher education released last week. David Willetts, the Minister for Universities and Science, has said through his reforms "the force that is unleashed is consumerism".

A new website will allow students to rate university courses by employment outcomes, average salary of graduates and student satisfaction ratings. Students' opinions about courses and academics will determine the future of the arts, humanities and social sciences, given the government has cut funding for them.

The humanities, which at their best cultivate democracy by teaching students how to discern truth from falsehood and speak truth to power or populism, will not survive this. The challenging methods and demanding curriculum required for classically liberal education do not provide instant gratification for the learner and will not satisfy as much as teaching and curriculum that comforts rather than confronts. Academics who may wish to cultivate citizens rather than consumers will be hamstrung by the need to please. In the West's journey from Plato to profit, there has been more responsible government policy on education. A primary motive for the development of public education in the 18th and 19th centuries was to cultivate moral citizens. Thomas Jefferson's land-grant colleges staked their legitimacy on an education in which the enlightened citizen was key to the development of liberal democratic society. The liberal arts education that inspired John Henry Newman was based on the notion that the moral citizen's pursuit of truth was engendered by a healthy intellect. The 19th-century German research university produced by the Enlightenment aimed to create the rational citizen by way of scientific method.

There has been a resurgence of literature on ethics, morality and the Enlightenment heroes of liberal citizenship. It has proponents including philosophers Martha Nussbaum and A. C. Grayling, historian Niall Ferguson, economist Diane Coyle and mathematician Robyn Arianrhod. Even atheist scientists such as Sam Harris are weighing in on a priori ethics and inveighing against the moral vacuity of postmodernism. But many university humanities departments have been slow to respond with a structured curriculum that cultivates students in the tradition of liberal citizenship.

While few universities offer an integrated curriculum to develop students as citizens, there is not just a need but a demand for it. A pan-European survey involving 15,000 students has revealed that while 98 per cent think universities should equip them with the knowledge required to participate in the labour market, 91 per cent say personal development is an important aim of university education and 87 per cent think universities should educate students in citizenship.

The development of pedagogy to develop students as citizens requires reconsideration of the student experience so as to preserve the academic freedoms critical to university autonomy. The conversion of students to consumers and the subordination of the humanities to the whim of satisfaction is destructive to the development of citizens, once a moral responsibility of universities. The policy of consumerism plunders the democratic capital of students who might otherwise become educated in the values and practices that prepare them for an active citizenship capable of enlightening the mind and regenerating liberal democracy.

Jennifer Oriel is a Melbourne-based writer and higher education analyst.