May 16, 2012, 12:36 pm
By Nigel Thrift
Over a long time, it has become clearer and clearer that the explanation of how we live has to feature not just the clash of “large” social forces, but also all the “little” things that keep us mobile, that run relay on our lives, the scaffolding that is also the building. The life of an academic is not just supported by these little things but made possible by them. Things like the feel of favorite pens (I can’t stand ballpoint pens), the kind of paper that can stand up to exclamations and repeated crossings out, the various software packages (from the ubiquitous Word and Outlook to Endnote, RefWorks or Zotero).
Then there is the study space, which is often an unholy mess which only the occupant can make sense of (there have been numerous photographic exhibitions based on this conceit: see here for example). The study space is full of books arranged just so, and desks located so…
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April 23, 2012, 4:44 pm
By Nigel Thrift
What should the title of the leader of a university be? In some ways, it’s a trivial question. But in some ways not. The deeper you go into the issue, the more complicated it becomes as different academic cultures reveal themselves. I know this after traveling around various countries where it soon became clear that the term “vice chancellor,” understood as the chief executive officer of a university, was unknown or meant something quite different, as it does in the United States where a vice chancellor is usually the head of one campus of a larger university or simply a chief assistant to the chancellor.
In turn, I reflected on the sheer diversity of the names of heads of institutions around the world. Even in the U.K., the home of the vice chancellor, there are also heads of institutions who are called principals, provosts, rectors and, increasingly, presidents.
So what about…
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April 12, 2012, 3:07 pm
By Nigel Thrift
The South Korean flag
Over the last week, I have been part of a U.K. higher-education delegation to South Korea, visiting universities like Seoul National University and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Kaist) and meeting senior representatives from many other South Korean universities. South Korean universities are pushing hard to make an even bigger impact in the world and, at least to judge by rankings, confidence levels and the state of their campuses, they are clearly succeeding. The South Korean higher-education system is in overdrive although it still has some problems, particularly a fall in tuition fee income, driven by electoral politics and a substantial demographic downturn which will have rapid impacts on the numbers of domestic students arriving at university….
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March 28, 2012, 3:46 pm
By Nigel Thrift
Civility is a nebulous word. The dictionary defines it as “formal politeness and courtesy in behavior or speech.” More generally, it is often used as a means of belaboring what often seems like the increasingly destructive nature of public debate with its nasty ad hominem attacks and its displays of vitriol which are often out of all proportion to the offense. I am reminded of Peter Sloterdijk’s argument that one of the key innovations made in democratic procedure by the ancient Greeks was simple turn-taking in debates, encouraged by new forms of architecture. Now we seem to need a set of similar protocols to bring back civility to the public realm, whilst remembering the caution that in the past civility was too often caught up with the exercise of deference. This imperative has been underlined by the recent furor in the United States over remarks made by Rush Limbaugh concerning a…
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March 14, 2012, 4:39 pm
By Nigel Thrift
The annual conference of the European Universities Association (EUA) will take place at Warwick on March 22-23. The conference will be attended by over 300 university heads from all over Europe. It will cover many issues including, no doubt, the vagaries of E.U. financing, the different degrees of university autonomy, and the idiosyncrasies of university rankings (it is worth mentioning that the EUA report on university rankings is by far the best available to date).
But, inevitably, hanging over the proceedings like a cloud, will be the parlous state of higher-education finances in many of the countries of Europe in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The university heads present will, of course, report a diverse experience of cuts and general restructuring. But, all that said, very few national systems have escaped some degree of austerity while some have had to face real and…
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March 5, 2012, 5:23 pm
By Nigel Thrift
Over the last 20 years, the British higher-education sector has become used to continuous change and it has adapted triumphantly, at least if we consider the sector’s current position as a world leader. But even by historical standards the current rate of policy change in England is extreme and the risks to the sector’s preeminent world position are correspondingly greater.
Now, taken individually, none of the plethora of policy changes currently spinning themselves out is necessarily disastrous. But, taken together, the changes present extraordinary challenges to the higher-education system. We have to adapt our offer to ensure that it even better meets the needs of today’s students (many of whom are part-time, all of whom want a quality education and affordability), we have to do great research, and we have to perform the many different functions that over the last 20 years…
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February 24, 2012, 10:33 am
By Nigel Thrift
Universities are routinely described as public goods. But it is remarkable how little the phrase still tends to be interrogated even though, as the vast literature in economics shows, there are genuine problems of definition.
That will not do. I was stimulated to think about this issue again after reading a recent column by the indomitable Martin Wolf in the Financial Times. For, as Wolf points out, public goods are “the building blocks of civilization.” As he also points out, the challenge of supplying public goods “could be the defining story of the century.” Yet at the moment, one of the most central of public goods, higher education, seems to be coming under threat. There is agreement amongst most commentators that markets cannot do the job of supplying public goods like higher education on their own but also that states cannot fill out the whole field either, not least because…
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February 15, 2012, 11:57 am
By Nigel Thrift
Last week Monash and Warwick launched an attempt, unique so far as I know, to build a globally networked university through cooperation as well as organic growth. It is early days, of course, but the omens are good.
Why so? Because both partners are whole-hearted. We realized early on that what counted in forming an alliance was that the cultures of both universities had to be similar. Without that precondition, nothing else would happen. And both universities are similar in that they are both children of the 1960s who have had to do it pretty much for themselves without benefit of large endowments or similar forms of largess.
The process is premised on specific assumptions about the shape of global higher education in 20 years time. It could be argued that there will be four chief models of university around the world by then. First, there will be the 30 or so institutions with…
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February 6, 2012, 1:47 pm
By Nigel Thrift
It is interesting to consider just what proportion of world art and culture is housed in galleries and museums owned by universities. I suspect that the figure would be a pretty impressive one, any way you look at it. But what is really impressive is not the quantity but the sheer exuberance of so many university collections.
A number of examples come immediately to mind. Take museums. When I was a member of Oxford University I had quite a bit to do with some of the magnificent Oxford collections and no doubt it would seem rational to point to the newly redeveloped and completely transformed Ashmolean as the jewel in the crown, but my own favourite was undoubtedly the museum that (then at least–it has subsequently been extended and renovated) was tucked away at the back of the Oxford Natural History Museum, the Pitt-Rivers. An anthropological museum it is but of a very specific kind…
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January 27, 2012, 5:20 pm
By Nigel Thrift
In the rest of this century, I suspect that getting our cities right will be one of the most pressing of the many lines of research that universities will have to engage with. Why would I make such a strong statement?
Here are the facts. As Burdett and Sujdic note in Living in the Endless City, cities and metropolitan regions make up only 2 percent of the world’s land surface, but they are already lived in by 53 percent of its inhabitants, a figure which is expected to reach 75 percent by 2050. In other words, the 21st century is witnessing the great and final decanting of humanity out of rural areas and into “arrival cities,” to purloin the theme of Doug Saunders’ recent highly readable book. Only this week it was announced that at the end of 2011, more than half of China’s 1.35 billion people were now living in cities.
The result is that all kinds of problems start and end …
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