Maria Mendel
University of Gdansk
m.mendel@ug.edu.pl
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Place-conscious reflection in social
sciences (Tuan, Soja, Lefebvre, de Certeau,
Augé), anthropology (van Gennep, Turner),
and pedagogy of place (Gruenewald,
Thomson, Massey)
What kind of PLACE is university for the
students?
Why reflecting on university as a place?
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The reports prepared for the project: Students as Journeymen
between Communities of Higher Education and Work [HPSE-CT-
2001-00068] in 2001-2005 (partly published in 2008, 2010,
2012)
Germany (Duisburg-Essen), Norway (Oslo), Poland (Gdańsk),
Sweden (Linköping). The national research group lead by: LarsUwe Dahlgren, Gunnar Handal, Manfred Bayer, and Tomasz
Szkudlarek.
Methodological framework: phenomenography, discourse
analysis, hermeneutics.
400 interviewees (traditional students) – 600 interviews (senior
students interviewed as novices at work places).
The study was a conceptualization of the university as a place in
the light of this empirical research findings.
The students go through the university.
- according to van Gennep’s theory of rites
de passage, the university could be
understood as a passage, transition from
one to another social role and status.
The students treat university as a Place or
Space – in Yi-Fu Tuanian terms:
- Space (open and associated with freedom)
- Place (closure of space, our own space,
„our” world signified by our presence).
All the analyses convince that students are strongly oriented towards the
future and mostly express their thinking of prospective social role and
status. The rites de passage look strange (rite de marge ‘only’) in the light
of their strong will to go out from the university.
The students construct themselves through the lens of neoliberal ideology
and its market-driven economy, in three ritual phases:
1. Exclusion: becoming university student (which means: prospective
graduate generating the positive attitudes)
2. Marginalization: becoming a student as nobody (critical lack of consent:
cultural demands to give students professional preparation do not meet
the sufficient ability of academia)
3. Inclusion: becoming a somebody as graduate (who is promisingly valuable
for the contingent university).
The students feel that they are present at the university temporarily,
uncertain and pressed.
The students come to the university just for a while and trespass it.
They do not feel rooted in university not calling by cozy feeling of
overwhelming safety.
Thus the university is neither the Place nor the Space for the
students, although it is filled with the meanings of both
Thus university for the students becomes a corridor.
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University as other space, place of places (in heterotopic perspective) ought
to emphasize dual oppositions: place vs. space, closing vs. openness, safety
of the ‘well-known’ vs. call of the ‘unknown’.
The university as a Space plays its role better than university as a Place.
It promises only showing ‘other lands’ and not rooting in its own ground.
The students are endowed with their ‘real’ professional training not by the
university. The work-places and educational companies serve for the
students but in a frame of business of corporations.
It happens explicitly in a context of Triple Helix [Etzkowitz et al., 2000] and
New Triple Helix (Hazelkorn 2010), academic capitalism [Slaughter & Leslie,
1997]. The academics are not longer so much interested in their students’
studies. They do their research and R&D projects; they count their
publications and sum their points.
Why we can so hardly see the certainly not sentimental nature of marketdriven university?
The university everyday-life is turning into performance determined by the
market economy rules. It is shown clearly by the following items:
educational activities directed to the preferred subjects,
research activities directed to the applied sciences,
disproportion in the university funding with the R&D universities’ advantages,
the existence of two sorts of professors: the academics-businessmen (first)
earning much more money than the academics-teoreticians (second);
increasing immediate outer environment influence on the university aims and
tasks;
venturing the use of the university equipment for academics’ private
advantages;
support of the opportunism between university staff by encouragement to
act on the “less-value” scientific subjects, as applied sciences are called so
[Denek..op.cit, p.52-53; see: Mansfield and Lee..., op.cit.,p.1057 – appeal of
more intensive integration of fundamental and applied sciences]
universities become the educational-R&D centers (multi-universities) that
resemble well designed, profit-oriented enterprises [Kerr...,op.cit.].
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Polish Journeyman is perhaps convinced that...
individual success depends on the high professional qualifications, good comprehensive
education, initiatives, enterprising and activity, solid and honest work [compare:
Swierzbowska-Kowalik, 1994];
in the nearest future higher education will be more meaningful in the common sense.
Since 1990s the economic motif (higher salaries) may be taken in Poland into
consideration due to positive correlation between university diploma and level of
earnings [Buchner-Jeziorska, p.102].
However, in a light of temporal state of the universities, which become profit-oriented
organization, most significant characteristic of the students and their behavioral
disposition is seeking of the professors. The university’s most valuable activity is not
longer didactic. It results curious situation in which the students are forgotten by
professors, who are – paradoxically – the inner part of the university as a place but
permanently involved in the outer space, in not-student aspects of university life [WnukLipinska, 1996].
This observation by Wnuk – Lipinska may refer to all Journeymen who wandering among
the places that are recently changing in accordance to the above tendencies.
We distinguished three categories of identity present in the
narratives of (psychology students,MM) Freshmen (first grade
students), Seniors (last grade students) and Novices
(graduates working in their first year after study):
- ‘projected’ (construction of professional identity is explicitly
based on preconceptions - common understanding of ‘what
psychologist is’, and apotheosis of social role of psychologist
(especially clinical therapist). Main motivation is oriented
towards the social interest and visions of high social status of
psychologists.,
- ‘educated’ (what the university ‘does’ about identity in
course of studies – through formal and ‘hidden’ curricula?
Etc.)
- ‘confronted’ identity (what it becomes after the year outside
a university)
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The university institutionally ‘speaks’ by meaningful two-part structure of the study (present in N,G,PL, not present in
Sweden, where PBL is offered):
in the 1st part “students are asked to read a lot of books and to learn as much as possible from them” (students feel
controlled and safe)
in the 2nd part: “...comprising approximately two years means the writing of theses...” – research-like way of learning
(students feel surprised being expected to be more independent and self-directed; they feel not safe).
Other observations relating to above statement:
Master Thesis is one of the most important tools in such a rhetoric (“you must do your own research and become
independent professional”)
The subjects (students) turn into a “problem-solving” or “co-figurative” culture trying to manage learning on from and
keeping strong links in peer groups.
Rhetoric of the academically-oriented offers that means lack of well organised (in relation to contemporary vocational
challenges) professional education: “read the books and do not ask” (Why most students complain about the programmes
emphasising their “too academic” features?)
Mostly vertical relations to the teachers (in all the groups involved): the academics are the ‘watch-dogs” of such a rhetoric.
Rhetoric of professional role model [that means “be aware of the features of dominating role model”]. The institution
presents the ambiguous approach. On the one hand wants its subjects to behave accordingly to the role model. On the
other, it offers “too academic” programmes. The institution talks about professional preparation from the academic
perspective and does not serve vocational training
The apotheosis of dominant specialisation – clinical therapist- and minimal vocational training in this field is used as a tool
in such a rhetoric
The subjects are not satisfied due to insufficient preparation to the dominant role. They are acting contrarily to the rhetoric
as in the above and design their own visions of future role on a basis of extra-university experiences.
the subjects become “credit-learners” who are under control and feel comfortable and safe. They are looking for their
proficiency outside the university, i.e. in highly appreciated contacts with professionals in everyday-life.
‘CONFRONTED’ IDENTITY is described here by institutional pacts ‘written’ in Novices’ statements
referring to their transition from university to work and confrontation of these two different worlds.
Pact no.1
Providing with professional abilities is not an obligation of the university.
A/ This what makes you professional is not university study but working as a psychologist [all the
groups involved].
B/ So, do not even think of profession coming out from academia [Poland, Germany, Norway].
C/ The university cares of only what you know [theories that were presented], not about what are your
professional abilities and skills.
Comments
According to the pact above, for example The Polish Chamber of Psychologist suggests to introduce
the standards of teaching of prospective psychologists in the universities by the statement: “Psychology
students get their professional education outside the university that is free from responsibility of
providing them with training and other ways of vocational preparation”.
Despite of this pact, that lack of professional preparation of psychology students is compensated by
the emphasis of selected theoretical issues that might “resemble” practical preparation, such as clinical
therapy [mostly in Poland, Germany]
◦ Perhaps the universities consciously treated and
clearly named as corridors might act more
transparently and fair offering their students more
readable face.
◦ The young people studying nowadays move in the
mist.
◦ The mysterious sign that is labeled university
produces the emptiness while offering deep gap
between its culturally formulated promises and
‘junk fruits’ that are mostly not necessarily welcome
in the work market.
University as another place finally could compose itself as a list of future
tendencies and appeals, i.e.:
◦The most important thing to do is not to obscure the fact that indispensability of
the mass of students studying at university seems to be one of politically created
and economically accounted myth.
◦The practice of lifelong learning contradicts this myth because the very nature of
learning is far of diplomas and all the forms in which credential society acts. Its
locus moves to the terms of the passion of knowing and satisfaction of
understanding that can be free of institutional frames.
◦Can we talk of the corridor in regards to the university as a place of lifelong
learners?
The place, as the sphere of influences and conditions of agency closest to the
human being, is the ground for the autonomous formation of the subject's
identity. On the other hand, the place constitutes certain geometries of power
(Massey 1994,2005) that proliferate – for example - as fractals or rhizomes
(Deleuze&Guattari 1986) that create limits to agency that would enable subjective
self-creation.
Perhaps we should learn more about it in a context of heterotopias which are the
universities of lifelong learners.
Killing thinking. The Death of the Universities (Lock & Lorenz 2007) ?
The end of university monotopia?
Thank you for your attention!