• Plan du site
• Recherche
• Écrivez-nous
• English
• Déclaration de confidentialité de l'ACPPU

 

Publications et recherche
ALLOCUTION  DEVANT L'ASSEMBLÉE DU CONSEIL DE L'ACPPU

Mike Jennings, secrétaire général
Fédération irlandaise des professeurs d'université

30 avril 2008

A Chairde,

Tá áthas mór orm bheith annseo í bhfur láthair inniú. Is mór an honóir dom agus do Cónaidhm Éiireannach na Múinteoirí Ollscoille (CÉMO/IFUT) an cuireadh a fháill teacht agus labhairt ag an cruinniú tábhachtacht seo.
 
Chers Amis,

Merci beaucoup pour votre gentille invitation de parler à votre conférence. C'est un grand plaisir et un grand honneur pour moi et pour IFUT d'être ici. Je vous apporte un message d'amitié et de solidarité de vos collègues irlandais.
 
Et en plus, puis-je mentionner les travaux de votre organisation et comment vos efforts ont été appréciés partout.
 
Dear Friends,

It is a great pleasure to be here and it is a great honour for me personally and for my Union, IFUT, to have been asked to address your important conference. 
 
I have extended greetings of solidarity and gratitude to you in three different languages, Irish, French and English
 
Being accustomed to bilingualism this might seem to you a very commonplace and routine occurrence. But I believe I have made an important political statement and have, by my actions demonstrated where I and IFUT stand in relation to one of the important dividing lines facing education today.
 
By taking the time to say the same thing three times in three different languages I am not merely declaring my respect and admiration for three different cultures and three  different linguistic traditions, I am also declaring that I am not one of those who values "efficiency" over content and substance, who are obsessed with counting and measuring.
 
I am proud to stand by traditional Academic values of diversity and completeness, of inclusiveness and openness, of tolerance and mutual respect.
 
But many people — and regrettably too many in senior positions in Universities —subscribe to the "greed is good" philosophy that cooperation "is for wimps" and we should not extend respect to different traditions but rather create competition between them to arrive at one "superior" tradition by survival of the fittest.
 
These narrow people with their "workload model mentality" could not understand why I would speak three times when once would do. Their "efficiency model" would have me stand up, speak and sit again in the shortest possible time period.
 
(Maybe, if I go on too long many of you will think "they're not wrong!")
 
With their stop watches, their clip boards and their time charts they would be as willing to set a precise number of seconds for my address as they would be prepared to set precise, measureable targets for you to do your imprecise, immeasurable literally invaluable task of extending the boundaries of knowledge and passing on the results to your students.
 
I will presume that in Canada you experience the same problems as we do — dealing with a ruling class of administrators and "systems junkies" who know nothing about what we do but can calculate exactly how long it should take us to do it!
 
These people will suck all the vitality and uniqueness out of our Universities because, since they cannot count what is valuable, the simply value what is countable.
 
This issue has a particular character in Ireland which gives it an especially pointed edge.
 
Ever since 1987 pay bargaining in Ireland has been conducted on a National, tri-partite (and more recently quadri-partite) basis. This means that the pay and conditions of all workers (public and private sectors) are negotiated in National Agreements — usually of three years duration — by the Government, the Employer Bodies and the Trade Unions (and of late also by representatives of  the Community and Voluntary Sector).
 
One of the recent unwelcome side effects of this centralized process has been the tendency to pander to the virulent anti-public sector prejudices of right-wing commentators and their media cheer leaders by conceding to their Mantra-like calls for "Public Sector Reform" and the imposition of draconian "efficiency measures".
 
But these "efficiency measures" are often driven by ideological considerations rather than practical realities and they are devised by people who do not understand what it is that Academics actually do.
 
Worse still is the fact that implementation of these measures is entrusted to administrators and managers not to educators.
 
The result is that we are over-managed and under-led, because our managers have no coherent or viable vision.
 
Specifically, the result has been the imposition of a series of "Action Plans" which are based more on "box-ticking" than adding value.
 
So we spend more time form-filling and less time educating. More time explaining how we work than working to explain, which is what education is supposed to be about.
 
As I speak a new National Agreement is being negotiated and it gives me great pleasure to tell you that there has been an historical level of co-operation between all four Education Unions in Ireland — not least in drawing up an agreed programme, one element of which is that only Teachers should decide what concessions Teachers should give in return for a wage increase. We are determined to resist the imposition of changes for change sake which will not only worsen our conditions of employment but also damage the education system to which we have dedicated our working lives.
 
But the challenge to the quality of Higher Education World-wide is not confined to the incursion of administrators doing what administrators do. There is an ideological struggle going on also.
 
It is the struggle to defend Academic Freedom and the pursuit of knowledge and excellence for its own sake ("Let the lamp of learning lead us where e'er it shines") against those only concept of the value of education is as a narrow, short-term job qualification and economy-server.
 
For such people education and learning are not liberating forces which enhance the quality of our humanity. They are mere tools used to get a better paid job and to assist businesses make more profit.
 
In Ireland the Heads of our Universities recently wrote a submission in support of a 150% pay rise. Their argument was not that they were Primus inter Pares in "Communities of Scholars" dedicated to advancing human knowledge with a track record of service to society going back hundreds of years.
 
No, they preferred to describe themselves as "CEO's of major corporations" and they boasted about their "muscular" management skills.
 
(They may have been disappointed to receive pay awards of a mere 19% to 30% but, no doubt they were comforted by the fact that the same Pay Review gave a zero increase to University lecturers- the ones who do the actual teaching and researching and who are so "muscularly" managed.)
 
At a recent University seminar, the entire day went by without the word "student" being mentioned once. They were "customers", "clients" and "product end users"!
 
Such people do not talk about the excitement and the liberation of learning and discovery. They talk about "the usefulness of outcomes".
 
This is the language of Commodification.
 
Speaking of which, permit me now to pay a special tribute to the work CAUT has done on this issue internationally and, if I may, can I especially mention your Associate Executive Director, David Robinson?
 
David's work on the issue of the commodification of education but especially his work exposing the attempts to have education included in the GATS process is of enormous significance and is hugely regarded in the international community of Academic Trade Unions. David's efforts in this area have brought great credit not only to himself but also to your Union. But even more importantly, they have proven to be a "wake up call" for all who love education to act before it is too late.
 
In Ireland, despite many years of the "Celtic Tiger" i.e. unprecedented economic growth and prosperity, it is a sad and shameful reality that our Universities are experiencing a funding crisis.
 
Part of the reason for this crisis is that despite the correctness of the decision of our then Labour Party Minister for Education to abolish Tuition Fees, the reality is that since then successive Centre-Right Governments have not provided the finance from central funds to replace this income.
 
This funding crisis has led to two main outcomes.
 
The first is the reemergence of strident calls for the reintroduction of Student Fees.  These calls come both from the Right Wing who would happily see education restored to its rightful place as a privilege purchasable by the wealthy as opposed to being a civil right enjoyed by all, but also, sadly, from misguided Left Wingers who see Higher Education as a means of private career advancement for individuals which the taxpayer should not subsidize.
 
It is, incidentally, both dispiriting and somewhat sickening to note that spokespersons for both of the above viewpoints will, quite happily, and apparently without blushing, simultaneously hail this year, 2008 as the 40th anniversary of the major, socially progressive decision to abolish fees for second level education. This pioneering decision is commonly cited as one of the building blocks of today's prosperous Ireland.
 
Apparently, these people see no contradiction between acknowledging the major societal benefit of mass access to second-level education while seeing no benefit to participation in Higher Education other than personal or private enrichment.
 
There is also a second major outcome from the Universities' funding crisis. This outcome is so convenient for Neo Liberals that one could believe it was engineered. This is the phenomenon whereby Academics in cash-starved Colleges are being encouraged more and more to embrace fields of study and areas for research, not for their intrinsic value but rather on the basis of what will attract more private and corporate funding and sponsorship.
 
Just walk around any Irish University campus. You will not have to enter even a single building, you will be able to tell from the outside which Schools and Departments are popular in corporate boardrooms.

The Buildings and the Chairs do not bear the names of individual businessmen. That would be crass and egotistical, no the names are those of the "Benefactors'" fathers, which just happen to be the same.
 
Even if we do not question the altruism of all or any of these philanthropists, is it not blindingly obvious that if this funding system persists then only those areas of study which benefit and comfort the wealthy and the powerful will prevail while those which challenge them will decline?
 
In the age of commodification of Higher Education, international league tables are not so much the peer reviews of the product but rather the Yellow Pages directory for browsers and potential customers.
 
In this World, the most important Department in a University is the Marketing Department. Many of our University Managers are more concerned with giving the impression of excellence than achieving the reality of excellence.
 
Chasing a higher ranking on a spuriously constructed international league table might seem like a slightly puerile but ultimately harmless past time for our University Heads. But this is not a victimless frolic and there are negative consequences.
 
Let me give two brief examples from Ireland.
 
In one leading Irish University a certain ambitious and image-conscious Professor wants to improve his department's standing in the international league tables. So he draws up a list for his staff. These are only "proposals" of course, but non-compliance carries a penalty. The list not only contains a requirement to produce their research plans to him (despite expressed fears of plagiarism) but also, helpfully, stipulates the exact "high impact" journals in which findings should be published. (Needless to remark, none of these journals are published in any language other than English.)
 
Certainly, this guy's points will go up. But at what price in terms of the Academic Freedom of his "subordinates" and at what cost to the quality of their research?
 
In another University an IFUT member who has a track record of decades of first class work in one area of the Irish economy (an indigenous area) has been denied promotion because -in pursuit of league table points - his University has installed a requirement that all work has to have an international dimension.
 
I am a proud citizen of Dublin city, a city celebrated in one of the finest literary achievements of the 20th century- James Joyce's Ulysses. This novel is universally acclaimed because by writing so accurately about one small city James Joyce captured an entire world.
 
It is a good job Joyce did not go to my friend's University. They would have rubbished his book and insisted on a few shallow chapters about his time in Trieste, or maybe even a fictional romp in Hollywood!
 
It is estimated that there are approximately 17,000 Higher Education Institutions (HEI's) in the World. Picture these as 17,000 students in one massive class. A good educator recognizes that students are talented in a variety of ways. Just because "A" is quiet does not mean he isn't brilliant. And "B" may be inarticulate but yet she can be capable of producing wonderful gifts of beauty and insight. We are in danger of being managed by bad educators, the type who are easily dazzled by the obvious and the easily measured. Whose concentration on the "Top 100" will consign 16,900 HEI's to second-class status.
 
These bad educators send out bad messages:- "forget diversity, forget the pursuit of truth for truth's sake and knowledge for knowledge's sake, forget individuality and originality and innovation. Give us more of the same, the safe. Give us uniformity give us talents which are easily measureable and achievements which are easily countable."
 
I beg to differ. My Union begs to differ. And I know that this proud Union, CAUT, begs to differ.
 
That is why I am so proud to be here today.
 
Thank you very much!
 
Merci beaucoup!
 
Go raibh míle maith aguibh!