The New Idea of a University by Duke Maskell & Ian Robinson

Author:Duke Maskell & Ian Robinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: University, higher education, bureaucracy, education, government policy, training, skills, utilitarian, politics, philosophy of liberal arts, public expenditure, learning, academia, academic, education, training, teaching, modules, A-Levels
ISBN: 9781845403720
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2012
Published: 2012-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

Well, it’s all management isn’t it, whatever name you use, just as we’re all customers? As a matter of fact, no. ‘Management’ applies to things like estates, households, and in the present ethos, above all, limited liability companies. If all bodies are managed by managements why does not the body imposing these changes use the term of itself? But the Secretary of State for Education and Employment is not going to be renamed a Manager, nor are the officers in the Civil Service with whom he works. Her Majesty the Queen is not going to be renamed General Manager of the Realm, nor even is ‘Manager’ going to be brought in for the President of the European Commission.

TQM links with the ‘customer’ talk like this:

Quality is about meeting ‘customer needs’ .... Without top level management commitment, drive and direction quality issues in an organisation will soon ‘wither on the vine’. Taking a line of least resistance by non-management involvement will leave those who operate the day to day activities of an organisation with little direction, low morale and uncompetitive. Quality has and must be managed, one cannot leave it to chance and those who think otherwise are sadly misguided. [30]

What is the sense of the clause beginning ‘Taking a line ...’? ‘Quality has and must be’ should be ‘Quality has been and must be’. Again, the ordinary subliteracy is remarkable as a sign of something deeper, the supposition that in a university morale will be low and we shall be ‘uncompetitive’ if we just get on with our work.

But if quality is ‘about meeting customer needs’ it is not the quality we talk about in everyday life. Something is being attempted with ‘quality’ rather like what has been done to ‘skill’, and with the same purpose. As W. A. Hart says,

In short, ‘quality’ in ‘quality assurance’ is a technical notion, only tenuously linked to ‘quality’ as the term is used in ordinary speech. It is quality in the sense of ‘fit for a purpose’ (and crucially also within a certain price range) rather than quality in the sense of ‘good of its kind’. [31]

We are told by Prof. Morris that ‘quality assurance’ is quite different from ‘quality control’ and demands the establishment of ‘ quality objectives appropriate to our role in the higher education sector’ so that we must ‘ establish procedures within the College whereby these objectives may be realized’. All these phrases, anyway - and I do not pretend to be able to follow the distinction between ‘quality assurance’ and ‘quality control’ [32] - depend on an understanding of ‘quality’. I was employed by ‘UCS’ to lecture in (not ‘teach’) English Language and Literature. My understanding of ‘quality’ is that I have to engage in the thoughts that constitute my subject to the best of my ability, with such students as will join in, and if I (or my peers) find that I cannot do it reasonably well I should resign. ‘Quality’ here is just the day-to-day thinking, the university subject itself.

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