{"id":745,"date":"2019-03-16T17:05:15","date_gmt":"2019-03-16T16:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.convivialthinking.org\/?p=745"},"modified":"2019-04-26T14:37:28","modified_gmt":"2019-04-26T12:37:28","slug":"how-do-we-know-the-world-series-part-xi-to-what-extent-does-a-colonial-present-pervade-higher-education-and-serve-to-reproduce-structural-hierarchies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/2019\/03\/16\/how-do-we-know-the-world-series-part-xi-to-what-extent-does-a-colonial-present-pervade-higher-education-and-serve-to-reproduce-structural-hierarchies\/","title":{"rendered":"[How Do We “Know” The World Series] To what extent does a colonial present pervade Higher Education and serve to reproduce structural hierarchies?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Su-ming Khoo and\u00a0 Paul Prinsloo
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

How does the concept and pursuit of \u2018quality\u2019 in Higer Education (HE) bind to, or unbind HE from, stubborn inequalities? To what extent does a colonial present pervade HE and serve to reproduce structural hierarchies? We believe that it is essential to examine historical-structural roots of inequities and understand how these bound and bind HE values, identities and approaches to generating \u2018expert\u2019 knowledge. This process is crucial if we are to make it possible for HE to become sustainable in the sense of social and ecological survivability and justice, rather than resigning ourselves to a HE that sacrifices both in the name of economic expansion and competitiveness.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The rapid global expansion of HE has resulted in an explosion of quantity, but with the inevitable corollary of increasing concerns about \u2018quality\u2019, which then has to be defined and controlled. The concern with quality has become an imperative for quality assurance regimes centred on quantification, accountability and audit of research and teaching. While there is little consensus on what \u2018quality\u2019 actually means\u00a0(Ryan 2015), the lack of agreement has not forestalled a race towards performative \u2018quality\u2019, enacted through quality assurance measures that are \u2018more competitive and rigorous than ever before\u2019, standardized and recognized regionally and internationally\u00a0(Council for Higher Education Accreditation 2007). Quality as \u2018performed\u2019 by HE means \u2018governance by numbers\u2019 (Ball 2015), numbers that enable institutions and individuals to be evaluated and scrutinised in terms of measurable outputs. What does this tell us about who gets to decide what \u2018quality\u2019 means and how we \u2018know the world\u2019 in the context of HE?<\/p>\n

Neoliberal notions of \u2018quality\u2019 embed the principle of competitiveness as the central logic of market societies. Neoliberalism \u00a0can be described as \u2018disenchantment of politics by economics\u2019\u00a0(Davies 2017), a disenchantment that is more than the simple promotion of a \u2018flat world\u2019 of \u2018free\u2019 markets. The conception of the market is implicitly hierarchical and concerned with extending the logic of competition<\/em><\/strong> as a moral and political rationality into all spheres of life (Davies 2017). Neoliberal marketization hinges on competitive ordering, via the valuation or devaluation of different types of activities and \u2018outputs\u2019. Global schemes of competitive ordering tune individual student and researcher values and identities towards \u2018productivity\u2019, narrowly-defined and determined by academic publishers and student evaluations. This logic results in competitive gaming, cheating and tyranny through distortions, distraction and confusion of purpose\u00a0(Muller 2018). It also maintains levels of profitability for academic publishing that outstrip Google and Amazon\u00a0(Buranyi 2017). On one hand, there are many ways \u2018quality\u2019 can reinforce oppression, as every evaluative scheme and criterion reproduces and deepens existing hierarchies, prejudice and disadvantage. \u2018Oppression\u2019 has five \u2018faces: marginalization, status hierarchy, domination, exploitation, and cultural imperialism\u00a0(Young 1990). \u00a0In performatively reproducing \u2018quality\u2019 criteria, HE diminishes non-market values and purposes such as critical thought, dissent, inclusion, emancipation, intrinsic truth and inquiry, even though such values remain historically associated with HE. On the other hand, there may be prospects for disruptive counter-performativities, which we hope to explore under the signs of \u2018unbounded\u2019, \u2018open\u2019 and \u2018connected\u2019 HE practices and potentialities.<\/p>\n

The \u2018value for money\u2019 focus has opened up a legitimacy crisis and existential debate about the purpose and value of HE in the first place, and whether such value can, or should be, measured in terms of economic return\u00a0(Tomlinson 2018). As Davies argues, one of the \u2018limits of neoliberalism\u2019 is how long it can carry on reproducing an assumed \u2018level playing field\u2019, as inequality mounts up and hardens into intergenerational mechanisms and structures.<\/p>\n

There is space to only briefly mention two critiques and attempts at transformative thinking \u2013 the \u2018Western\u2019 democratic critique of egalitarianism and African critiques of Western epistemic domination. The critique of egalitarian theory seeks to overcome the fixation of egalitarian thought with improbable and abstract scenarios, to the detriment of those who are actually politically oppressed, fighting against inequalities of race, gender, class and caste, or the victims of nationalism, genocide, slavery and ethnic or misogynistic subordination\u00a0(Anderson 1999). Egalitarian justice\u2019s negative aim is to end oppression, which is not an individual characteristic (which must be compensated with whatever individuals \u2018morally deserve\u2019), but is a social imposition, (implying the positive aim to construct a democratic society in which people stand in relations of equality to others) (Anderson 1999, 289). Inegalitarian ideologies of racism, sexism, nationalism, caste, class, and eugenics generate and justify inegalitarian social relations and consequently inegalitarian distributions of freedoms, resources, and welfare. African critiques seek to liberate thought from its colonial history of epistemic domination\u00a0(Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2018), and to imagine escape from the racial \u2018logic of enclosure\u2019 that haunts the colonized subject\u00a0(Mbembe 2017).<\/p>\n

We are currently hoping to take our own institutions as exploratory starting points (UNISA in South Africa and NUIG in Ireland). Through collective intelligence and curriculum piloting, we will seek to explore the problem of bounded inequities and how equality can be placed at the centre of, a renewed conception of \u2018quality\u2019 that rejects exclusionary, exploitative and competitive hierarchy in favour of equal dignity, plural values and justifiable achievements.<\/p>\n

A renewed conception of quality centrally incorporates the public equality mission of HE \u2013 defined as obligations to lead, enact and sustain a transformative post-Apartheid knowledge society in South Africa and to uphold a new (2014), positive Public Sector Duty to counter discrimination and promote equality and rights in Ireland. We hope these obligations warrant an exploration of the nature of oppression within, and through, HE in a world of widening inequalities and social divisions. In constructing and advancing a basic theoretical and conceptual framework for understanding bounded inequities in HE, we hope to potentially \u2018unthink\u2019 inegalitarian quality assurance and rethink the meaning of \u2018quality\u2019 in ways that free equality from oppressively-defined boundedness.<\/p>\n

Su-ming Khoo<\/a> is a Lecturer in the School of Political Science and Sociology at the National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland<\/em><\/p>\n

Paul Prinsloo<\/a> is Research Professor of Open and Distance Learning at UNISA, South Africa<\/em><\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anderson, Elizabeth S. 1999. “What is the Point of Equality?” Ethics<\/em> 109 (2): 287-337.<\/p>\n

Buranyi, Michael. 2017. “Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?” Guardian<\/em>, June 27. https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/science\/2017\/jun\/27\/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science.<\/p>\n

Council for Higher Education Accreditation. 2007. What Presidents need to know about international accreditation and quality assurance.<\/em> CHEA.<\/p>\n

Davies, William. 2017. The Limits of Neoliberalism: Authority, Sovereignty and the Logic of Competition .<\/em> London: Sage.<\/p>\n

Mbembe, Achille. 2017. Critique of Black Reason.<\/em> Durham, NC: Duke University Press.<\/p>\n

Muller, John. 2018. The Tyranny of Metrics.<\/em> Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.<\/p>\n

Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo. 2018. Epistemic Freedom in Africa.<\/em> London: Routledge.<\/p>\n

Ryan, Tricia. 2015. “Quality Assurance in Higher Education.” Higher Education Learning Research Communication<\/em> 5 (4).<\/p>\n

Tomlinson, Michael. 2018. “Conceptions of the value of higher education in a measured market.” Higher Education<\/em> 75: 711\u2013727.<\/p>\n

Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference.<\/em> Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Su-ming Khoo and\u00a0 Paul Prinsloo How does the concept and pursuit of \u2018quality\u2019 in Higer Education (HE) bind to, or unbind HE from, stubborn inequalities? To what extent does a colonial present pervade HE and serve to reproduce structural hierarchies? We believe that it is essential to examine historical-structural roots of inequities and understand … Continue reading “[How Do We “Know” The World Series] To what extent does a colonial present pervade Higher Education and serve to reproduce structural hierarchies?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[33,15,32],"class_list":["post-745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-speaking","tag-decolonising-the-curriculum","tag-epistemic-justice","tag-how-do-we-know-the-world-critical-scholarship"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":810,"href":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions\/810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}