Ideology and the Reform of Public Higher Education

Abstract

In this article, I critically examine calls for reform of public higher education. I construct a counter-intuitive alliance between the conservatism of twentieth-century philosopher Michael Oakeshott and the more recent thinking associated with post-structuralism. It is argued that in Oakeshott and post-structuralism, we find a similar critique of the idea behind these reforms as imposing instrumental or productivist values on higher education. What is produced is a type of person organized to produce more and to demand of herself greater production. This critique is associated with a broader criticism of liberalism found both in Oakeshott and post-structuralism that the liberal order produces a normalized and docile individuality. Conversely, it is argued that theories of higher education in Oakeshott and post-structuralism inform a broader positive idea of individuality, enacted in a “style,” having intrinsic worth, and never reducible to any finished form.

Notes

¹ See Jacob Segal, “Freedom and Normalization: Poststructuralism and the Liberalism of Michael Oakeshott,” American Political Science Review 97:3 (2003), pp. 447–458.

² Michael Foucault, The Care of the Self: Volume 3 of the History of Sexuality (New York: Vintage Books, 1988), p. 284.

³ Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” in James D. Faubion (ed.), The Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, vol. 3, Power (New York: The New Press, 2000), p. 336.

⁴ Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 282.

⁵ Travis Reindi and Ryan Reyna, “Complete to Compete: From Information to Action: Revamping Higher Education Accountability Systems,” NGA Center for Best Practices, July 2011, < http://www.nga.org/files/live/sites/NGA/files/pdf/1007COMMONCOLLEGEMETRICS.PDF>.

⁶ Michael W. Apple, “Education, Markets, and an Audit Culture,” Critical Quarterly 47:1–2 (2013), p. 20.

⁷ For a skeptical account of performance standards see Jeff E. Hoyt, “Performance Funding in Higher Education: The Effect of Student Motivation on the Use of Outcomes Tests to Measure Institutional Effectiveness,” Research of Higher Education 42:1 (2001), pp. 71–85.

⁸ Reindi and Reyna, “Complete to Compete.”

⁹ Texas Public Policy Foundation, < http://7solutionsresponse.org/index.php?unit = s5>.

¹⁰ Alexandra Logue, “Time, Space and Learning,” Inside Higher Education, November 18, 2013, < http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/11/18/essay-changing-ideas-time-space-and-learning-higher-edu>.

¹¹ Ibid.

¹² Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Boston, MA: The MIT Press, 1990).

¹³ Michael Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage Press, 1977), p. 222.

¹⁴ Ibid.

¹⁵ Michael Foucault, History of Sexuality: An Introduction (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), p. 143.

¹⁶ Ibid., 139.

¹⁷ Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).

¹⁸ See also, Jean-Francois Lyotard, “Performativity, Post-Modernity and the University,” Comparative Education 32:2 (1996), pp. 245–258.

¹⁹ Ibid., 46.

²⁰ Ibid., 53.

²¹ Cris Shore and Susan Wright, “Audit Culture and Anthropology: Neo-liberalism in British Higher Education,” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 5:4 (1989), pp. 557–575.

²² Ibid., 556.

²³ Ibid., 566.

²⁴ Ibid., 567.

²⁵ Maarens Simons, “Learning as Investment: Notes on Governmentality and Biopolitics,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 38:4 (2008), pp. 523–540.

²⁶ See also, John Morrissey, “Governing the Academic Subject: Foucault, Governmentality and the Performing University,” Oxford Review of Education 39:6 (2013), pp. 797–810.

²⁷ Simons, “Learning as Investment,” 536.

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ Kenneth Wain, “Foucault: The Ethics of Self-Creation and the Future of Education,” in Michael A. Peters and Tina (A.C.) Besley (eds), Why Foucault? New Directions in Educational Research (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2007).

³⁰ Ibid., 174.

³¹ Michael Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

³² Michael Oakeshott, “Rationalism in Politics,” in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Press, 1991).

³³ For the concept of the situation mind, see Leslie March, “Oakeshott and Hayek: Situation the Mind,” in Paul Franco and Leslie March (eds), A Companion to Michael Oakeshott (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press 2012).

³⁴ Michael Oakeshott, “On Being Conservative,” and “Rationalism in Politics,” in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1991).

³⁵ Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1991).

³⁶ Although Oakeshott usually comes out better than Hayek in the comparison, see for example, John Gray, “Hayek on Liberty, Rights and Justice,” Ethics 2:1 (1981), pp. 73–81.

³⁷ Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, p. 236.

³⁸ Michael Oakeshott, “Religion and the World,” in Religion, Politics and the Moral Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), p. 32.

³⁹ Michael Oakeshott, “The Place of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind,” in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Press, 1991), pp. 500–501.

⁴⁰ Wendell John Coats, Jr, Oakeshott and His Contemporaries: Montaigne, St. Augustine, Hegel, Et Al. (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2000), p. 105.

⁴¹ See Wendell John Jr, “Michael Oakeshott as Liberal Theorist,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 18:4 (December 1985), pp. 773–787; and Paul Franco, “Michael Oakeshott As Liberal Theorist,” Political Theory 18:3 (August 1990), pp. 411–436.

⁴² Andrew Gamble, “Oakeshott's Ideological Politics: Conservative or Liberal,” in E. Podoksik (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Michael Oakeshott (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 153–177.

⁴³ Michael Oakeshott, “The Universities,” in The Voice of Liberal Learning (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 112.

⁴⁴ Michael Oakeshott, “Learning and Teaching,” in The Voice of Liberal Learning, p. 45.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 62.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 47.

⁴⁷ Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, p. 41.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 241.

⁴⁹ Paul Franco, “Un Debut dans la Vie Humanine: Michael Oakeshott on Education,” in A Companion to Michael Oakeshott, p. 189.

⁵⁰ Suvi Soininen, From a Necessary Evil to an Art of Contingency: Michael Oakeshott's Conception of Political Activity (Exeter, UK: Academic Imprint, 2005), pp. 86–87.

⁵¹ Ibid., 94.

⁵² Michael Oakeshott, “A Place of Learning,” in The Voice of Liberal Learning, p. 32.

⁵³ Michael Oakeshott, “Education: The Engagement and Its Frustration,” in The Voice of Liberal Learning, p. 90.

⁵⁴ Franco, “Un Debut dans la Vie Humanine,” p. 187.

⁵⁵ Rose, Powers of Freedom, pp. 282–283.

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Notes on contributors

Jacob Segal

Jacob Segal is an associate professor of political science at Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York. He has published articles in New Political Science, American Political Science Review, Contemporary Political Theory and other journals. He wishes to thank his union, the Professional Staff Congress-CUNY, for financial support while he was part of their Leadership Training Program and wrote part of this article.