My local library in Worcester is now housed in a new building called the ‘Hive’. With its irregular shape and exterior of gold-coloured panels, it could be an example of ‘crapitecture’. But this is not the case: the Hive does not blight any neighbouring buildings, has a clearly-marked entrance, and suits its intended purpose. The purpose is revolutionary. The Hive is the only example in the UK of a combined public and university library. The specific needs of students are met by a university-only short loan collection, and the public are only allowed to borrow one copy at a time of books marked with a blue band as ‘high demand university items’. But otherwise, the two libraries have merged, resulting in a massive expansion in the number of book available to the general public, including a wide range of academic texts. The combination of students and the general public in a single building seems to work, although the new library is much noisier than the old Worcester City Library, as groups of students meet at tables, discuss assignments, eat, and socialise.
The Hive is revolutionary because it is a further step in undermining the higher education cartel operated by the traditional universities. Universities began in the Middle Ages, when books were scarce, few people were literate, and very few indeed had read more than one or two books. It made sense to group scholars around a library and give them protected status within the walls of an institution. With the 20th Century expansion of universities into giant research institutions providing mass higher education, there are far more people within the walls: but the walls still stand.
Four key elements have made universities exclusive: access to traditional printed resources such as academic textbooks; the lectures and seminars provided by university staff; access to on-line material, especially academic journals; and the awarding of qualifications. Libraries like the Hive challenge the first of these elements. The next element to be challenged is the university lecture. In the past two years, several universities have begun delivering MOOCs (massive on-line open courses). Each such course comprises a module of academic lectures on a defined topic made available free-of-charge via the Internet. Students (usually in very large numbers) register with the provider and may receive a certificate of completion after passing an on-line test. Providers of MOOCs make money in the same way as Google: by selling their database of subscribers (with associated personal details) to advertisers. They may also charge for completion certificates. Studying on-line is convenient, particularly for those who work and can only study part-time. But on-line lectures do not provide the opportunity to discuss issues in depth with an expert in the small face-to-face groups that take place (although less frequently than in the past) in universities. Nor do MOOCs or the Hive offer free access to the contents of academic journals. And of course, if you want to get a degree, you need to be a registered student at a recognised university.
Can these elements be developed outside universities? There is of course nothing stopping independent academics setting up seminars for students registered for a particular MOOC. They could charge a small fee/attender, and seminars of this kind already take place in India. Programmes of MOOCs could be assembled into a programme of study equivalent in length and standard to a university degree and then examined by an independent agency (rather like the way independent agencies set papers for GCSE and A-level examinations).
Opening access to research publications, however, is more of a problem. This is because academic research journals are published by a limited number of very profitable corporations. Academics contribute material for free, review each others’ papers for free, and (in most cases) edit journals with minimal remuneration. The corporations then print some copies, but mainly distribute via password-protected sites on the Internet. These sites include archive material from previous editions of each journal. Universities pay very large sums each year for access to the contents of these journals, which have been produced by university staff in university time, based on research which has often been funded by public institutions. Some research journals (such as the British Medical Journal or Nature) have large circulations, but most are read by a small number of specialists. This bizarre system therefore restricts public access to research, while also providing a massive public subsidy to a select band of private corporations. Governments are aware of this problem, and open access for research publications will eventually take place after much trial and error.
Once these problems have been overcome, there is an opportunity to provide low-cost higher education which would meet the needs of people who work and need to study part-time, who have limited financial resources, or who wish to avoid the massive costs and debts incurred by attendance at a traditional university. This would be a step beyond the ground-breaking Open University (OU) which was set up in the 1970s. But the history of the OU is a warning. Despite being innovative, convenient and low-cost, the OU did not provide the model for university expansion in the 1980s and after. Instead of creating new distance learning institutions, governments in Britain chose to expand the traditional universities with their full-time three-year degree courses designed for school-leavers. The result was to divert resources from training skills to producing degree certificates. Large areas of our cities have been blighted by student accommodation - multi-occupied second homes, used for only six months each year. This has been a major (but little-commented) factor in generating a housing crisis in the last two decades.
Students’ financial security has also been blighted by the decision to expand traditional university courses rather than open learning. Instead of studying while earning, students each now incur debts of £40,000 or so for fees and maintenance loans. Their three-year degrees often fail to provide them with the skills needed in the workplace, while the reduced number of seminars and small-group teaching sessions in many universities limit the intellectual stimulation that is meant to be the defining experience of higher education. So open access may still be impeded by the dead weight of existing institutions. Let us hope that technological change combined with public demand will create a new type of higher education that will be open to all who wish to study and learn.
See alsohttp://stuartcumella.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/guide-to-crapitecture.html
http://stuartcumella.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/how-to-teach-skills.html
http://stuartcumella.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/is-higher-education-rip-off.html
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