News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.
My former colleagues at another university in Middle East have also been moved to online teaching indefinitely, with the students…
If much of the interest of high-quality papers lies between the lines—in the metaphorical fire that a paper lights in…
I would also recommend that potential grad students make inquiries into how far the compensation package actually goes towards cost…
It’s a mix. I’m still in the UAE with my family, and we feel safe. But some students and faculty…
In the above comment, Michel wrote: “As an aside, every once in a while I check out how the chatbots…
I could imagine LLMs having saved me a *ton* of time in graduate school–e.g., by having supplied reasonable answers to…
The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…
And it's the Philosophy Department. What could be the explanation for this bizarre decision? Thoughts from readers. Signed comments strongly preferred.
UPDATE: This blog has a series of posts with information about protests, administrators involved in this fiasco, and other pertinent links. The pseudo-business blather from the Dean noted here might suggest why he would be unsympathetic to a department with a strong commitment to Marxist and critical theory.
I'm completely speechless.
Looks like pure administrative rent-seeking, as they demand 55% of each dept's income. It looks more like blackmail or extortion by gangsters than anything resembling university administration — but maybe it's time to outgrow such naivety? The end game seems to be that each dept is a franchise, able to use the University brand name in exchange for cash on the barrel head.
Their only values are money, and therefore they have no values at all. They don't care about the reputation of the university, and still less, about philosophy. In fact they probably have little conception of what a university should be, apart from the fact that it should make them money. I think the only way to stop this is to shame them and force them to reveal their absence of values. I certainly do not think, as a community, that we should just accept this. Time to act, don't you think?
The UK has gone insane. "measurable contribution" has even gone as far as the proposed "impact" assessment for programs, which would determine funding and which does not involve academic production but effects in the non-academic world. This stuff makes the US look elite by comparison.
This must be resisted – globally.
I once worked in the same institution as the Dean who has announced this outrageous decision. He was unspeakable then, but he has now surpassed himself. He is another failed British academic who is taking his revenge on those who have not failed. We will no doubt see more of this in the coming months and years. The Middlesex Department runs the most challenging and lively research seminars I have come across anywhere, which are a testament to the ethos and commitment of the department. This decision must be opposed in every possible manner.
The UK is indeed going crazy in respect of academic matters. The Higher Education Funding Council recently declared that every MA programme should include business awareness…no really that is exactly what they said. I take it that they do not mean raising awareness of commodity fetishism and alienation. In the UK we face what for us is an unprecedented attack on the very idea of education and on the intellectual freedom that defines a university. I fear a perfect storm. In the Thatcher years there were cuts but there was nothing like the combination of intellectual corruption, managerialism and administrative overload that characterise the context in which these cuts are taking place. The one thing our politicians take seriously is what happens in the USA and the views of powerful people there. It is just possible that a widespread outcry might reverse this bizarre decision (their RAE score and graduate recruitment makes the financial justification unbelievable as others have suggested.)
I am incensed, but also saddened. I spoke at Middlesex two years ago, and enjoyed one of the most challenging philosophical discussions I have had in my twenty years of teaching. The department is first-rate. Its members are not simply seeking advancement in the field; they value ideas and their consequences. They are good philosophers, and, more important, they are good people. This is a stunning loss.
I find it hard to believe that the contribution level's being 53 per cent rather than the expected 55 per cent is the whole story. If it were, then the sensible response would have been to look carefully at how the department was run, with a view to reaching the target. It would not have been difficult to find a way to add 2 per cent.
Meanwhile, the same university is advertising for this fatuous marketing post:
Here's a charitable view of the closure:
Its better to have a University that that is financially sustainable than a University which cannot afford to pay its staff.
Perhaps there is a lesson in this – it might be time for Philosophy departments to think of ways in which they can contribute to the bottom line, and not take their existence for granted.
This quote, from the first link, says it all:
"In a meeting with Philosophy staff, the Dean acknowledged the excellent research reputation of Philosophy at Middlesex, but said that it made no 'measurable' contribution to the University."
It is crazy. It is also shameful. At the same time is also a very predictable combination of economic rationalisation and Goverment interference of almost totalitarian proportions. If you read the Lambert Review on Business and University Collaboration (2003) it is clear that he recommends that UK Universities be made to do the Research and Development that British Industry is failing to provide. There is (this was one of Lambert's recommendations) a new cadre of managers in British Universities, who are managing by numbers, apparatchiks implementing Government policy. They don't know or don't care that Universities are not corporations and that the point of a university is to achieve excellence in teaching and research. But it is the government that rigs the market – through the research councils and HEFCE – and determines what areas look like viable economic prospects and what not. And this is New Labour. It cannot be blamed on Margaret Thatcher. The blog has attempted to documented this assault on Higher Education. It does not make good reading. The direction of policy change can be easily tracked from the names of the government departments. The Department for Higher Education became the Department for Education and Skills (2001-2007). This was merged with the Department for Trade and Industry in 2007 to form the Department for Industry, Universities and Skills (DIUS). In 2009 this was rolled up into the Department for Business and Skills, (BIS) currently headed by Peter Mandelson. He thinks like John Sperling, founder of Apollo Group, University of Phoenix's parent company who famously said: 'This is a corporation…We are not trying to develop student's value systems or go in for that 'expand their minds' bullshit.
What frightens me about this is that this decision doesn't seem to be justified based on financial necessity, but only on financial expediency. It's not that the university can't afford the philosophy department, but that the resources devoted to philosophy could bring in more money elsewhere. Combined with the fact that the research excellence of the department is not in question, and indeed exceeds that of the other departments, this suggests an utterly corporate ideology where optimizing resources trumps actual research or teaching goals of the university.
Time to act, indeed. It's hard to imagine that any reasoning could have an effect, and I suspect that the perpetrators of the act are pretty much impervious to shame – unless it threatens to hit them financially. A concerted and very public campaign is needed to assert the utter breakdown in credibility that this decision will bring on Middlesex if it carries it through. This needs to go beyond philosophy blogs and email correspondence between the parties involved.
The Dean is quoted as saying that Middlesex should shift from Band D to band C students (i.e. from general arts/humanities to students on courses involving lab or fieldwork research). Band D are 'worth' about 4k per fte, BandC just over 5k. Clearly while you may just about be able to teach courses such as Philosophy on 4k you can't do so and produce a surplus. So the university wants to recruit students to the higher costing courses but run them for less allowing it to take a profit and 'grow its business'. Across the sector we will find withdrawal from excellent programmes that do not lose money and a growth of STEM programmes run cheaply and badly so that university leaders can cash in.
As an external examiner for one of the MA programmes threatened with closure, as well as a colleague at the journal Radical Philosophy of several of those facing redundancy, I'm still just staggered by this extraordinary decision. What message does it send out to the rest of Higher Education, not to mention their own staff and students, about Middlesex's future as a serious academic institution – committed, so Middlesex claim, to ‘research excellence’ – when you make the decision to shut your own highest research-rated unit, only a year or so after it has earned the University a very impressive level of funding from the government's Research Assessment Exercise (which presumably the University will seek to pocket and use elsewhere)? The University really does need to be made to feel ashamed about this.
The broad lines of the above comments are of course true.
But what explains this "madness"? I am terribly sorry to use the following old-fashioned term, and it certainly involves simplification, but I think it is at least more adequate than any new-fangled vocabulary: in a word, what explains the madness is the logos of capitalism, in its consequent form.
Capitalism is concerned, in its pure variety, solely with quantifiable results, quantified in the last instance in money terms. Thus all other than such quantifiable criteria of success are deemed to be eliminable: that is, all intrinsic values (if this short list is not too "edifying": beauty, learning, morality, even the quest for truth, except in the instrumental sense) are "for the chop".
Many (but not all) academics usually, at some level, still believe in the intrinsic value of scholarship and learning. Thus they do not fit into the new world of British (or western) "education policy". So they are eliminable too, to be replaced by a new, conformist generation of manipulable academic technicians. All government audit and control instruments, like the QAA, RAE and REF, are oriented towards the slow but sure, even if de facto inefficient, production of this result.
Existing academic postholders express their disagreement and anger in reactions like the above. However, theirs is a rearguard action, for an evident reason: power in western society is not in their hands.
Up to fairly recently, say a quarter or half century ago, many liberals (in the broad sense of the term) were not consequent: they believed in the market, but made exceptions, like the family, or art, or music, or religion … or the universities. This exceptionalism has largely come to an end. The political and business classes are ever more characterized by a philistine mind-set. (There are some admirable members of these classes who still support such intrinsically valuable activities, but e.g. fund-raisers will know how difficult it is to locate them.)
What is happening at Middlesex will therefore be repeated elsewhere, even though we do not know the exact timetable, which depends on many contingent factors, and will take some time to come close to being fully implemented.
There are still niches, and many colleagues fighting to keep them intact. This is a marvellous thing. But they are fighting against the Zeitgeist, which is (broadly) a spirit of barbarism. Many "deans" and the like, those who implement particular plans of destruction, are agents or bearers of this Zeitgeist, but otherwise, for this reason, of very little interest. As the system demands, they too are interchangeable.
What to conclude?
Does anyone have statistics on the change in the ratio of academic staff to non-academic staff in higher education over the last few decades? It is my impression that a disproportionate amount of non-academic staff have been hired and it is not clear that we are any better off. At my institution (non-UK) it is definitely the case that a lot of the activity of non-academic staff is of dubious importance and requires a surprisingly high number of people. In fact, a lot of it seems to amount to bureaucracies making rules that then require an increased number of people to implement and enforce.
Here is a thought experiment that makes the point: let's say the Middlesex department rents some rooms across the street and carries on much as before, but as an independent entity. Assume that they can get the same funding, accreditation and number of students. In practice this won't happen, of course, but note that there is no legitimate reason for them to lose funding, accreditation or students. They are, after, all, the same people doing the same stuff. The only difference would be that they no longer have to pay their 'franchise fee' to the university. Now how much would they actually lose in virtue of not being part of the University? Are these 'managers' actually worth what we are paying them?
To cannibalize a line from Terry Pratchett: "Universities don't make money. Money is what you put into a university. Knowledge is what comes out."
If you have time, please express your discontent in writing directly to the people responsible for the decision:
Vice-Chancellor of the University, Michael Driscoll, m.driscoll@mdx.ac.uk;
Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research and Enterprise, Waqar Ahmad, w.ahmad@mdx.ac.uk;
Deputy Vice Chancellor Academic, Margaret House, m.house@mdx.ac.uk;
Dean of the School of Arts & Education, Ed Esche, e.esche@mdx.ac.uk.
There is also a facebook campaign site for updates and information on campaign meet-ups for those in the UK who would like to be directly involved:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=119102561449990
And a campaign email: savemdxphil@gmail.com
I'm a member of staff in Philosophy at Middlesex. Thanks to everyone here for their comments, and to all of those of you who have joined the facebook group, signed the petition, written to the VC etc. (And thanks, Brian, for bringing it to people's attention.) We really are tremendously grateful for this show of support, and not a little touched. Please keep spreading the word.
With your indulgence, I'll post again when there is news.
My understanding of the facts is that, basically, the philosophy department is being closed as the government subsidises other students to a greater degree. If this is correct it is almost impossibly perverse.
1. Universities are not in the business of maximising profits for shareholders.
2. The fact that we need less state subsidies is supposed to reflect badly on us? And this is justified on 'capitalist' grounds? If these other subjects were so great for the economy they would not have to be subsidised at all. In fact, a libertarian would recommend closing all business and technological departments, as, following their logic, the market would provide the optimal level of training. In other words, businesses would be incentivised to club together to provide this training, subject to the students being required to work for them for a specified number of years. Anything else would amount to an artifical, corporatist state subsidy to business.
3. All actual economists agree that there are market externalities that the market mechanism is blind to. Presumably an educated populace, a higher level of public debate, and a widespread ability to think critically and creatively, etc. are such externalities. These cannot be privately paid for due to a massive 'free rider' problem, but we do have a compelling collective interest in acquiring these 'commodities'. Hence, using purely economic logic, subjects that provide these 'commodities' should be publicly funded. Even in typical libertarian ideology this is exactly the kind of thing the government is for.
The 'market' did not kill this department. On free market grounds we should close business and technology related departments and subsidise philosophy departments. What killed this department is a stupid and inconsistent form of corporatism masquerading as 'free market' principles.
I share Grahame Lock's anger', but he misdiagnoses the situation. It is not the logos of capitalism, but rather the logos of (Weberian) bureaucratization. One of the first contributors, John Protevi, adequately captured the situation at Middlesex and many other European universities: this is rent-seeking behavior by the bureaucratic-managerial classes, which (in Europe) are the governing classes. University Departments get merged (or worse) while the central administration's assessments (and head-count) go up all in the name of 'efficiency.' (The economies of scale are illusory because of costs involved in increased bureaucratic control and propaganda efforts.) As the central administration expands, the logic of bureaucracy teaches that salaries for the managers of these large departments go up to.
It's a fact that in most European countries lower class tax-payers subsidize universities run by the (upper middle class) managerial class aimed at upper-middle class kids.
When VCs produce decisions that do such severe harm to the idea of the university that those of us who aren't managerial class share, then is it not time for successful departments such as this one to become independent and stop subsidising the corporate business school model of HE?
The stated goal for the cut is to get more students from 'band C' and less from 'band D'. This refers to categories explained here (page 12):
http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2008/08_33/08_33.pdf
Note that the explicit justification for the differences in funding has nothing to do with the government's judgment, economic or otherwise, of the value of a given subject. Rather it is a sensible adjustment based on the costs (labs, fieldword) involved in some studies.
Of course, Middlesex is legally allowed to spend the money as they wish. But, if they can really use this money not just to cover the added costs, but to increase their 'bottom line', one of two things must be true:
1) The government miscalculated the costs involved and philosophy is the victim of this mistake, or
2) Middlesex has just brazenly announced a long term intention to significantly underspend relative to what the government deems appropriate.
If (2) is true then Middlesex is now on record as showing a willingness to game the system and short-change their students. Any other justification (economies of scale, etc.) for the availability of the funds amounts to issue (1), as the expressly stated purpose of the funding was never to favour one subject over another, but to level the playing field. In this case philosophy's troubles are simply an artefact of a flaw in the funding formula. Hence it should be changed as it has demonstrably failed to address the problem it was supposed to solve.
An educational institution that does not encompass the study of philosophy within its overall curriculum surely forfeits any right to designate itself a "university", or to be considered one by society.
The decision to close down the Middlesex philosophy department is really terrible on all kinds of different grounds. It is even more outrageous than the previous announcements of departmental closures in the UK because the Middlesex program is one of the few in the UK that contribute to a genuine diversity of styles and forms of philosophy. In a country where analytical philosophy is almost imperialistic in its dominance, this small but resolute and absolutely first class department is a major expression of diversity. To close it down sends a terrible signal regarding UK philosophy. And this at a time when other countries in Europe are showing extraordinary levels of commitment to and acceptance of the type of analytical philosophy that is more characteristic of the english speaking academic world. A terrible decision that can severely affect the reputation and esteem of all of UK philosophy elsewhere.
A further consideration is the considerable success of Middlesex philosophy in bringing external funding into its university and its subject. For instance, the recently completed Cahiers pour l'analyse AHRC funded research not only shows the highest standards of research but also a capacity to bring this work to a wider audience while benefiting Middlesex University as a whole financially and in terms of academic reputation. If the department is cut this source of external funding will be lost and clearly cannot be replaced by research funding from much lower rated departments. This is another example of cutting a successful department for marginal and, indeed, questionable financial reasons with long term negative effects on the University.
If anyone can bear to look at the most recent HEFCE funding letter it is available here:
http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/circlets/2010/cl02_10/
And the letter, from Peter Mandleson,in December, that led to the allocations is here.
http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/hefce/2009/grant1011/letter.htm
As others have noted, the combination of the decline in the total teaching grant together with the decision to 'ring fence' science and engineering means that cuts will be amplified elsewhere.
Although government policy is behind the change in formula, each university is responsible for how it reacts to the change. And given that the funding situation is so fluid it seems mad, even purely in financial terms, to react so quickly to short term change. Perhaps Band C is for the chop next year?
But we should also be aware that the situation confronting Middlesex is not unique. It may be that they are simply the first to react.
I thought I would substantiate the claims for the excellence of the Middlesex faculty. We have seen the results of the RAE cited several times. What hasn't been mentioned are some details, for instance, that Peter Hallward is the author of the best single work on Badiou available in any language, _Badiou: A Subject to Truth_ (Minnesota, 2003): http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/H/hallward_badiou.html. Hallward is also author of a noteworthy book on Deleuze, which I reviewed at NDPR: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=10564. Readers can see that although it's a somewhat critical review, Hallward's book is clearly the work of a serious and committed thinker. There's no space here to provide similar links for other members of the Middlesex philosophy faculty, but they shouldn't be too hard to find for interested readers.
This is quite appalling. I second many of the views posted.
I am a philosophy graduate (Andrew Bowie – met you briefly at Cambridge, when I was living at Chris Lamb's place) and am now a science fiction writer – and recent casualty of cuts in the English Language dept at Bath Spa university, where they axed the entire TEFL department because it was insufficiently lucrative, on a scale of measurement which appeared to me to have somewhat flexible goalposts.
What I find extremely odd is the view that no ‘measurable’ contribution stems from the achievements in research of Philosophy at Middlesex. Of course it is not a measurable contribution. Even in the putatively ‘real’ world of commerce (the model for Middlesex management no doubt), no quantitatively measurable contribution ever comes from a company’s R&D department, because R&D is not sales. But Apple, say, would not be a premium seller today were it not (partly) for designers like Jonathan Ives’ research into 1960’s product design. So even if (and it’s a definite ‘if’) one assumes that a university ‘sells’ knowledge, a reasonable expectation remains that there must be overheads in generating that knowledge from research. Sales income comes later and indirectly (i.e., who could ever claim that someone bought an iMac because it reminded them of one of Dieter Rams’ TV designs for Braun in the 60s?).
Likewise, remember what Henry Ford (hardly an anti-Capitalist) said about advertising: ‘only 50% of it is any good. The problem is, I don't know which 50%’. We can take two morals from this. First: some benefits are always unquantifiable but still absolutely necessary. (Though having said that, I wouldn’t be surprised if Middlesex management did conclude from Ford’s point that a 50% cut in advertising would have measurable benefits.)
The second moral is this: there’s nothing worse than the amateur, botched, pseudo-commercialism of (some) university management, for we get the worst of both worlds – wannabe Capitalism and Kafkaesque bureaucracy.
I agree with the views of many of the posters here about this appallingly short-sighted and anti-intellectual decision. Surely, with more cuts and closures like these on the horizon, it is time for some organized collective action? I propose, for a start, that academics in UK universities refuse to cooperate with any RAE/REF related activities, as this whole "accountability" exercise clearly does not count for anything anyway when it comes to the crunch.
I'm grateful to Eric Schliesser for his suggestions regarding the analysis of the underlying cause of the plight of Middlesex philosophy – and other departments, with many more to come. This debate should be pursued. I am happy to understand capitalism in for example Alain Supiot's terms: "What distinguishes capitalism is … the rule of quantity … [But] calculating is not thinking, and the arithmetical rationalization on which [it] is built degenerates into madness." We know that twenty-first century capitalism is very different from earlier, entrepreneurial forms, and that it is largely controlled by a "managerial class" – in so far as that class is not itself "controlled" by the demands of its own structural position and by the delirious but congenital quest for total quantitative control. This position forces it into a mode of thought and action that operates at an ever greater distance from reality, working instead with audit-type instruments, as (in higher education) the above-mentioned QAA, RAE and REF. These function in a manner similar to the "information" gathering and report systems in the sometime Soviet Union, in which only results whose terms are defined in advance by policy goals (plan-fulfilment or over-fulfilment in the USSR – in today's Hefce-speak the equivalent is "excellence" etc.) are visible.
But in the context of the present discussion, the relevant point is that, while it is possible to complain – and legitimate and necessary to protest – about local "symptoms" of this structural process, of which the Middlesex closure is a shocking example, no more than partial and temporary victories against such systemic philistinism can be won while the structure itself perdures.
Specifically on the question whether the system has gone insane or crazy (Lawrence Hatab and Gordon Finlayson above), see e.g. Burkard Sievers, "The Psychotic University" (freely available on internet).
Grahame, as I see it there are two sets of issues. First there are the perverse consequences of Government policy – the REF and the financial incentives generated by the HEFCE block grant, and Research Council funding, given the adverse political and economic situation. There are the consequences of HE Policy since 2001 one of which is to restructure Universities and make them "market sensitive" "demand led" etc, and internally structured like corporations – disaggregagated into economically 'autonomous' sub-units, competing in an internal market. (This does produce a kind of madness in that it makes institutions behave increasingly like retail enterprises.) But that is not what I meant when I said the decision was crazy and shameful. The other issue is, as Jo says, how each University reacts within this framework. This is to a large degree up to them. Whether they hold their nerve, respect academic values, keep good departments ticking over, or make instant decisions on a short-time financial basis i.e. withdraw from research in certain areas (Arts and Humanities) and invest in others (STEM) that currently look more lucrative. Middx want to grab some of the "£10 million for allocation in 2010-11 to support institutions that are shifting the balance of their provision towards STEM subjects" – see the HEFCE funding letter in Jo's post. They are taking a big gamble. Who knows how long the present funding structure will remain in place? The economic situation changes fast, as does the labour market. After 1989 many Universities closed down their Russian departments. That already looked short sighted 15 years later when Russia was the third biggest growing economy. What is crazy and shameful is that Middx are happy to shut down a department that is excellent, has a good reputation, that has contributed enormously to the national and international reputation of Middlesex (which punches way above its weight in philosophy) and which has all the hallmarks of medium to long viability (excellent pg and ug recruitment and RAE performance etc) for a relatively small gain in funds in the short term, and it does this in callous regardless of the damage this will do to its credibility as a University. As for capitalism being the underlying problem here, that is only partly true. Middlesex (indeed philosophy, and indeed the humanities as a whole) did pretty well in the UK from about 1988 to 2001. The rot set in when the Government abandoned the Haldane principle, began manipulating field of academic research, encouraged Universities to do more skills training and less educating, incentivised them to restructure along corporate lines, encouraged them to be more entreprenuerial and less risk averse etc. This all resulted from New Labour policy initiatives first announced in the White Paper of 2001 and the Lambert Report. I would call this a Government led initiative to colonize the life-world. As a result of bureaucratic interference Universities are now suffering from the pathological effects of markets (rigged markets, not free ones) on formerly non-marketised domains of civil society.
'What I find extremely odd is the view that no ‘measurable’ contribution stems from the achievements in research of Philosophy at Middlesex.'
It's odd, not because its unmeasurable, but because it is measurable, (albeit imperfectly) and has been measured.
I mean that's what the REF was supposed to be all about, wasn't it?
Furthermore, there's a financial contribution, which is again measurable: success in the REF has implicaions for future funding. That's measurable too.
Whether that's the only basis on which decisions should be made is another matter: I reckon they shouldn't. But what makes this a particular charade is that the management decision is being made on grounds which seem to be manifestly false, in their own terms; and that this is so much a matter of course that no-one who hears about it bats an eyelid.
Incidentally, I gather that Middlesex gets to keep the REF money that philosophy has made, while shutting the department
While I hope that the MIddlesex department is saved, I think that if the department is closed there's a strong case that the AUT and BPA should campaign to have this funding redistributed to institutions which continue to support research in philosophy.
'it shouldn't'; not 'they shouldn't', of course.
"In a meeting with Philosophy staff, the Dean acknowledged the excellent research reputation of Philosophy at Middlesex, but said that it made no 'measurable' contribution to the University."
What measurable contributions do any other departments at Middlesex make which are not made by Philosophy?
What measurable contributions are made by the managers at Middlesex University? Who has conducted these measurements? Using what scale? And how are these measurements to be compared with the measurements which have been made of the work of their academic departments?
There may be some who are disinclined to lend their voices to the condemnation of this despicable decision, because they hold no truck with the style of philosophy practised at Middlesex. I would urge them to put aside disciplinary differences. What we are witnessing here, and what we already witnessed at Kings and Liverpool, are the opening salvoes in what is more than likely to be a prolonged and bloody battle. Any divisions amongst us will be ruthlessly exploited by both government and managers. Our discipline has rarely, if ever, been so vulnerable.
Just noticed this job ad at middlesex
Leave a Reply to Jamie Avis Cancel reply