Interview with Shane Simonsen

Dr Shane Simonsen is conducting research on university level education and interviewed me electronically for his research. The transcript of questions and answers is given below.

Your article "Why I am not a Professor", outlining your departure from academia in 1999 over declining standards and conditions, was written in 2007. Can you shed light on any further changes of the state of the tertiary education system since then?

There is a recognition at government level that the standards have dropped at university and that degree inflation is rife. The UK government has abandoned its target of 50% of the population in higher education. The public sector deficit has caused the university budget to be cut by £500 million in 2010 and we shall see further cuts. However all the mechanisms of assessment discussed in that essay are still in place.

Do you have any further personal perspectives on academia and your life post-academia to share since you left?

Post-academia life is not simple. For many academics leaving the university, there is no equivalent employment. If you are a medieval historian, there are scant opportunities outside of university for your talents. For an academic pushing middle age, competing on the falling job market against younger people can be very hard. Hence people cling to the wreckage of higher education for fear of the colder world outside. The colder world does have something to offer; freedom. Provided you can establish a minimum income, you are free to research without the pressures of bureaucracy. Generally if you are an academic, you are extremely smart and self-motivated. Hence plan to be self-employed and plan your route of escape in advance.

What advice would you offer to students currently considering a postgraduate degree?

Generally don't do it. Unless you are doing it for pleasure. Consider very carefully what career you can expect. If you are from a poor country and want a visa to the West, it can make sense.

What advice would you offer to students considering an undergraduate degree?

It's good experience, but places you in debt. Are you doing it for a job? If so, consider self-employment or a certificate course from a college. I recommend self-employment because the situation with work is that people are being laid off and you can expect worker's rights to suffer. To an employer you are dispensable asset. To yourself you are not.

Do you believe the on-going fall out from the global financial crisis has fundamentally changed the balance of risks versus rewards for investing in a tertiary education?

There is a more general problem to do with the labour market which is that the industrial, agrarian and information revolutions of the last 250 years have been directed towards increasing productivity i.e. at eliminating the need for people. At the same time there is this government fetish about full employment. The two do not square. We simply do not need full employment to service our needs. This is the work deficit.

The problem of reconciling full employment with increasing productivity has been met in two ways. First by increasing demand through civil and military consumption. However civil consumption has a kind of peak; once you have the basic items - you really don't need much more. Our standard of living, the things we use, haven't changed much in 30 years. You would be quite comfortable in a '70s home. Military consumption is wasteful and destructive.

So faced with the work deficit, the governments have responded with massively expanding the public sector (800,000 jobs in the UK) creating many plastic jobs of little worth that have actually depreciated the quality of our services. Our real level of unemployment is probably close to 7-8 million.

The future we are heading towards is one where a few very rich people control most of our wealth, and production is in the hands of a technocratic elite. This technocratic elite will be university educated and will come from the top institutions. There will be a pool of public sector bureaucrats, doing fairly mundane and useless jobs to maintain the fictional level of unemployment. They will often have some degree, though it doesn't matter too much what. There will be a class of proles, increasingly made up of displaced middle class types, struggling in a hostile job market, on the dole or on piece work and being fairly lost. Finally there are those who manage to avoid these other groups, black market traders, doctors, lawyers etc. Having a degree is no guarantee of any worthwhile job, but fear of ending up in the prole class will spur people to take it on even if they end in debt.

Some elements of this scenario are classical Marxism. The creation of a large surplus labour class due to concentration of the means of production is a Marxist scenario. The conditions for social unrest predicted by Marx are there. At the moment this unrest is checked by bread-and-circuses - dole money, reality TV etc. The reconciliation of increasing levels of real unemployment with maintaining consumption sufficent to fuel production is also supported by increasing levels of personal debt. The global crisis and the massive public deficits are indicators that these checks may not be supportable for much longer.

Finally what options would you consider to be viable alternatives to a tertiary education? Might the ongoing decline in tertiary standards see employers seek alternative mechanisms for staff selection?

I believe some big corporations, IBM, Sun, Google are going to open their own degree courses. Much more courses will be online. Online education will drastically reduce the cost of a degree. Many students will study in their parents' home.

Mark

dr.mtarver@ukonline.co.uk