Dame Nancy Rothwell, the President of Manchester University arrived at University Place yesterday to debate the purpose of education with hip-hop artist Akala, Steve Jones from the Manchester Institute of Education and Paul Cottrell, the former Head of Public Policy at the UCU, in talk hosted by Manchester’s Challenging Orthodoxies Society.
The debate started with a brief talk by both Jones and Rothwell discussing the idea and varied success of university as an agent of social mobility, while also touching on the effect university should have on young adolescents, preparing to enter a career.
A more relevant critique of Britain’s system of universities was promoted by the talks of Akala and Paul Cottrell. Both men, asked a number of crucial questions: is the pursuit of knowledge in our universities being marginalised by the managerial desire for profits and funding now provided by students? what are the implications of the lack of democratic infrastructures within our universities? and; how can we ensure that universities help foster the range of radical thinking and visionary ideas required to help make the world a better place?
These are questions which hold a certain pertinency with regards to the Post-Crash movement, and the struggle of economics students in trying to improve the standard of the education they receive.
For an education lacking in pluralism, in an open, honest discourse of battling classroom ideas is unlikely to produce students who can tackle, conceptualise and address the almighty variety of political problems and humanitarian tragedies around the globe. And an education deprived of the institutional oxygen of democratic practises is unlikely to produce students who may appreciate, understand and critically engage in Britain’s parliamentary democracy.
University democracy could well work wonders for economists. It would allow students to engage politically in university life, a chance to apply the wonders of pluralist, classroom economics to the allocation of resources within wider university: a microcosm of real-life politics, if you like, a chance to test themselves and their ideas on a relatively small playing-field, before springing into parliament.
One thing is for sure: the importance of restructuring academic economics lies congruent to, and situated within a wider web of importance – the need to restructure the institutions of higher education in Britain themselves.