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Professor Sir David Watson
3 March 2008
Centre for Higher
Education Studies

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• What does HE do? Create “capital.”
• For whom? The “student estate.”
• How? Metaphors for learning and teaching in the modern university.
• Reinventing “liberal” HE. The significance of the arts and humanities

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Human capital (Becker)
Social capital (Putnam)
Creative capital (Florida)
Identity capital (Coté)
Mental capital (HMG)
Capital capital

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Mode of production
Values
Performance indicators
Objectives
Trust and mutuality

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Individual agent
Economic rationality
Education duration/qualifications
Individuality income/productivity
Calculative trust

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Networks and relationships
Shared norms and values
Mutual obligation/civic engagement
Quality of life
Normative trust

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“Clusters” of creative people
Diversity and tolerance
“Low entry barriers”
Rates of innovation
Affective trust

The US class structure, 1900-1999
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Source: Florida 2002

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Percentage change in enrolments by subject area, 1996/7 to 2005/06
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UK HE student numbers by mode and level, 1979 - 2005
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50
40
30
20
10
0
70
60
Percentage of young full-time first degree entrants from
Socio-Economic Classification classes 4, 5, 6 and 7,
2005/06
Sector
Russell
1994
CMU
GuildHE
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–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Computers aren’t technology
Internet better than TV
Reality no longer real
Doing rather than knowing
Nintendo over Logic
Multitasking way of life
Typing rather than handwriting
Staying connected
Zero tolerance for delays
Consumer/Creator blurring

Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
(Simon & Schuster 1998).
“ Students these days are, in general, nice. I choose the word carefully. They are not particularly moral or noble. Such niceness is a facet of democratic character when times are good. Neither war nor tyranny nor want has hardened them or made demands upon them. The wounds and rivalries caused by class distinction have disappeared along with any strong sense of class…..Students these days are pleasant, friendly and if not great-souled, at least not particularly mean-spirited.
Their primary preoccupation is themselves, understood in the narrowest sense (8283).”
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• Games
• Craft
• Conversation

W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis ,
(Jonathan Cape, 1975)
“ Winning is overcoming obstacles to reach a goal, but the value in winning is only as great as the goal itself…..So we arrive at the startling conclusion that true competition is identical with true cooperation….In true competition no person is defeated (111) .”
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Richard Sennett, Respect: the formation of character in an age of inequality , (Allen Lane,
2003.)
“ Part of what makes both men rare performers is that they have achieved mutuality; many musicians have the cooperative impulse, but few manage to translate it into sound. Even more is this true of social life; an enormous gap exists between wanting to act well toward others and doing so…..I argue that in social life as in art, mutuality requires expressive work. It must be enacted, performed
(59).”
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Richard Sennett, The culture of the new capitalism , (Yale U. Press, 2006.)
“ A person can use the words correct or right in describing how well something is done only if he or she believes in an objective standard outside his or her own desires, indeed outside the sphere of rewards from others. Getting something right, even though it may get you nothing, is the spirit of true craftsmanship (195).”
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“The modern era is often described as a skills economy, but what eaxctly is a skill? The generic answer is that skill is a trained practice
(37).”
“‘Embodied knowledge’ is a currently fashionable phrase in the social sciences, but ‘thinking like a craftsman’ is more than a state of mind; it has a sharp social edge (44).”
“To do good work means to be curious about, to investigate and to learn from ambiguity (48).”
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William Miller, Conversation: a history of a declining art , (Yale U Press, 2006).
Quotes Michael Oakshott: Conversation is “an unrehearsed intellectual adventure,” as with gambling, “its significance lies neither in winning or losing, but in wagering.”
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Honesty (inc. scientific procedure)
Reciprocity
Manners
Self-motivation
Discipline
Respect for the environment
Collective agreement

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“I loved my time at university. My understanding of my subject had hitherto been blinkered by the arguments of Mawdudi, Qutb and Nabhani that history was a conflict between Islam and the rest of the world. But I was determined to open up my worldview and slowly, independently, question some of the concepts and tenets I had once held dear (1567).”
“Another of my tutors was Professor John Tosh, author of The Pursuit of History.
His lectures caused me to question my approach to history. One thing history was not was an idle intellectual pastime. Professor Tosh argued that the past created the present, and that the past was open to multiple interpretations. What seemed like blasphemy at first slowly began to make sense (159).”

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Soft citizenship
Values
Worked examples:
• Dearing on breadth (recommendation 16)
• The Harvard “core”
• The Melbourne “model”
• The Russell Group’s “balanced meal”
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• Breadth as well as depth
• The “ethical turn”
• Student “mutuality”
• Civil society before the state
• Professional formation at the second cycle

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• Research and scholarship
• Employability and professional formation
• Instrumental and liberal values
• Academic careers

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In several of these respects, it is arguable that the arts and humanities have already arrived. The research and teaching agenda for these perennially popular subjects are inextricably inter-twined. As Cary
Nelson and Stephen Watt declare in their Academic Keywords: a Devil’s
Dictionary for Higher Education
, “research and writing together produce the contemporary intelligibility of the humanities” (Nelson and Watt,
1999: 221).
Watson , Managing Civic and Community Engagement, p. 100

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