"(British) Universities under Attack"

[MrAmsterdam]

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n24/keith-thom ... der-attack

Universities under Attack

Keith Thomas

We are all deeply anxious about the future of British universities. Our list of concerns is a long one. It includes the discontinuance of free university education; the withdrawal of direct public funding for the teaching of the humanities and the social sciences; the subjection of universities to an intrusive regime of government regulation and inquisitorial audit; the crude attempt to measure and increase scholarly ‘output’; the requirement that all academic research have an ‘impact’ on the economy; the transformation of self-governing communities of scholars into mega-businesses, staffed by a highly-paid executive class, who oversee the professors, or middle managers, who in turn rule over an ill-paid and often temporary or part-time proletariat of junior lecturers and research assistants, coping with an ever worsening staff-student ratio; the notion that universities, rather than collaborating in their common task, should compete with one another, and with private providers, to sell their services in a market, where students are seen, not as partners in a joint enterprise of learning and understanding, but as ‘consumers’, seeking the cheapest deals that will enable them to emerge with the highest earning prospects; the indiscriminate application of the label ‘university’ to institutions whose primary task is to provide vocational training and whose staff do not carry out research; and the rejection of the idea that higher education might have a non-monetary value, or that science, scholarship and intellectual inquiry are important for reasons unconnected with economic growth.

What a contrast with the medieval idea that knowledge was a gift of God, which was not to be sold for money, but should be freely imparted. Or with the 19th-century German concept of the university devoted to the higher learning; or with the tradition in this country that some graduates, rather than rushing off to Canary Wharf, might wish to put what they had learned to the service of society by teaching in secondary schools or working for charities or arts organisations or nature conservation or foreign aid agencies or innumerable other good but distinctly unremunerative causes.

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Advanced study and research are essential attributes of a university and some of that research will have vital social and industrial applications. But that is not its primary purpose, which is to enhance our knowledge and understanding, whether of the physical world or of human nature and all forms of human activity in the present and the past. For centuries, universities have existed to transmit and reinterpret the cultural and intellectual inheritance, and to provide a space where speculative thought can be freely pursued without regard to its financial value. In a free and democratic society it is essential that that space is preserved.

That will not happen unless the fate of our universities becomes a prominent political issue. We need constituents to badger their MPs and voters to make their views felt in the polls. This will prove a demanding task, but I think that the British public might prove a more receptive audience for our message than is sometimes assumed. Moving, as I do these days, among retired people of a certain age, I am struck by how many of them, though not university-educated, are strongly committed to the values of higher education. They sustain the cultural institutions of the country, whether museums and galleries, or concerts of classical music or the National Trust. They read books and, unlike some students, they seem to enjoy going to lectures. We should mobilise their support, and that of others like them. What we need to do now is to clarify our aims and then to form a pressure group – perhaps the Council for the Protection, not of Rural England, but of British Universities. We should secure the help of an enlightened benefactor, hire a public relations agency and take our case to the country.

Keith Thomas and Michael Wood spoke at ‘Universities under Attack’, a conference sponsored by the ‘London Review’, the ‘New York Review’ and Fritt Ord held on 26 November at King’s College London.

It is well worth reading the complete essay on the "London Review of Books" website.

[tayga]

[rant] There has been an effort to destroy all levels of education in the UK for a quarter of a century. Apprenticeships went first. Schools are administered and inspected to death and universities have become too expensive.

The University where I work is a corporatocracy which employs more lawyers, managers and administrators than lecturers and researchers. Instead of researching full time, I spend half of my time trying to make old and broken basic equipment work while I strive to meet the lofty goals I have to promise in order to obtain funding, 60% of which pays these smug parasites.

It's no wonder students' fees are so high.

I think the job is nearly done. Pretty soon, the PTB will have the ignorant working class they want. [/rant]

[303vegas]

tayga's right. seems like they're trying to do the same to education as they did to the nhs which is pretty much at breaking-strain right now. too much admin, too much 'managenent,' the sitfling of common sense and dynamism by the supposed neccessity for procedures for every tiny aspect of the job, the list goes on... you can't just do your work right now without justifying your every move to some burton's-window shop dummy.

[ifrean]

excellent article, the same story in ireland unfortunately where I spent most of my lecture time erm discussing with lecturers the strangling of innovation in my own field, read I was told, and not them books it has to be referrenced material gone through the peer review system and the list would be supplied to me. No thinking outside the box just vomit the crap back up at exam time and you will get through this, unfortunately trying to move the discipline forward is not on the curriculum

[tayga]

just vomit the crap back up at exam time and you will get through this

That's how the success of the indoctrination is measured.

[Phorce]

Advanced study and research are essential attributes of a university and some of that research will have vital social and industrial applications. But that is not its primary purpose, which is to enhance our knowledge and understanding, whether of the physical world or of human nature and all forms of human activity in the present and the past. For centuries, universities have existed to transmit and reinterpret the cultural and intellectual inheritance, and to provide a space where speculative thought can be freely pursued without regard to its financial value. In a free and democratic society it is essential that that space is preserved.

It is well worth reading the complete essay on the "London Review of Books" website.

Because this is what defines us as people and a society. People just don't know this, they are this just like a rock is a rock, a person is defined by their cultural, intellectual and historical context. The same with Physics and Cosmology. If there is a loss of contact with reality then there is a corresponding loss of identity. This is the legacy we are living with at the beginning of the twentieth century. There has been a deeply serious loss of identity leading to such things as the huge mental health epidemics we have had (depression, suicides and loss of meaning to almost nihilistic proportions). But every system, every process has its turning point back away from the precipice and back to reality. Who can say when this kind of sociological phenomenon starts sweeping upwards to push through deep changes in Universities and cosmological science ? I would say that it's all happening "in the background" now but is not spectacularly obvious due to the more personal nature of the changes.

[MrAmsterdam]

http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/M ... klin,_1751

In 1751 Benjamin Franklin published “Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America.”

Experiments summarized in this booklet determined the existence of positive and negative charges, and the difference between insulators and conductors. This work led to the invention of the lightening rod. Its complete construction was popularized in Poor Richard’s Almanack in 1753. This is the first practical engineering application of electricity.

A unifying theory covering static electricity, lightning, and stored charge was invented. Recognition was immediate; Franklin received the Copley Medal in 1753.

Literally, Franklin invented this in a provincial place when compared to London. The colonies were a backwater. Equipment had to be imported by sailing ship. Until his work was accepted by the Royal Society, it was not accepted knowledge.

Jean Francois Dalibard experimentally confirmed that that lightning was electricity in Paris in May 1752. Franklin wrote a letter to Joseph Priestly in 1772 that described his 1752 test of using a kite with a key at ground level connected to a Leyden Jar to prove the theory.

Electricity changed from a parlor demonstration to a science. The lightning rod is the engineering achievement connecting science to public safety. Bernard Finn, writing in The Proceedings of the IEEE (Vol. 64, No. 9, September 1976, p.1271) said that, “His own powers of reason led him quickly, by the spring of 1747, to the hypothesis that all matter normally contained a certain amount of electrical fluid, and that the particles of this fluid were attracted to particles of ordinary matter but repelled from each other. Bodies with too much fluid would therefore repel each other; and a body with an excess would be attracted to a body with a deficit. From such a concept arouse the terms positive and negative, plus and minus.”

The milestone plaque is at the entranceway of the American Philosophical Society Library, 105 South Fifth Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., around the corner from Independence Hall. The American Philosophical Society was founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743. Its library holds the world's largest collection of Franklin manuscripts. The Society owns a copy of Experiments and Observations on Electricity. http://www.amphilsoc.org

http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Benjamin_Franklin

Franklin was an experimenter and inventor all his life. He was fascinated with electricity. He developed much of the basic vocabulary of electricity, including terms like “battery,” “conductor,” and “electrician.” He also conducted many experiments. His most famous was his 1752 kite flying experiment. The experiment proved lightning is electricity. He followed this discovery by inventing lightning rods. These are tall iron rods mounted to the sides or tops of buildings. They attract lightening and direct it into the ground, thereby reducing the risk of fire. His reputation was made when he published his work on electricity in Experiments and Observations on Electricity Made at America in Philadelphia. Excited scientists in Europe rushed to try his experiments. Unfortunately, one Swede was struck by a bolt of lightning and killed when he tried a kite experiment of his own.

Do you think think that the theories the famous backyard experimenter would be accepted by the royal society nowadays? Especially when the experimenter came up would his own fantasy words to describe his experiment?
I think the answer would be;

"Electricity? Whats that? Its not mentioned in my laws of physics schoolbook. You're a pseudo-scientist!"

(replace the word "electricity" in 18th century with the 21st century words as "electric phenomena in space" or "cold fusion" etc, all undiscussed in the academic centers )

[Phorce]

Why was that accepted then ? In this case the key would seem to be the words "public safety". I guess people were willing to tolerate some eccentricities once it could be clearly seen that there was a way to stop unnecessary fires and so forth that were caused by lightning. I am tempted to suggest that people were more practical in those days (18th century) and were more willing to call a spade a spade but maybe that's not very fair. My own University has advised on how to protect the UK's power network that could be seen as supporting companies alone, but it is of course an issue of public safety.

[MrAmsterdam]

....and at the same time being blind for Tesla's radiant energy inventions that would render a power network obsolete...each and every of us would have an independent energy generator, possibly even during a sun-storm..

Again, not discussed...would that be a sociological phenomenon then?

The workshop "Geomagnetically Induced Currents in National Power Grids", organised by Lancaster University with the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) and the British Geological Survey, brought together representatives from Government, industry and academia.

Professor Mike Hapgood from RAL Space is a Visiting Professor at Lancaster University.

"The worst case scenario is that this would damage the National Grid so that it would take months to recover and cost hundreds of billions of pounds. We are so dependent on electricity that it's hard to see how society would function without it. The food supply chain would break down and water and sewage pumps would fail. This is a one in 200 year risk which is the sort of odds which the insurance industry deals with."

You see, the worst case scenario in case of "Geomagnetically Induced Currents in National Power Grids" would be a blessing in Tesla's radiant energy devices - geomagnetically Induced Currents in local Grids - are needed to make the system work...however the powergrids would not be controlled on a national level and somehow they seem to miss the non-centralized solutions.

[Phorce]

As far of my understanding of that history goes it was less sociological than a money/profit decision that worked against some of Tesla's inventions. That was happening at a time when Capitalism was almost unquestioned and at it's zenith. Now we've edged up against ecological and sustainability concerns. Society seems more willing to accept alternative pathways and technologies. For example see my post on the Z-pinch fusion thread. British and American Universities may be missing this. Possibly because of reduced funding, but I don't think it's all a total disaster by any means. It was an Australian university that took the Imploder to be tested and verified it. This is the same for the E-Cat ...

There is a "Independent Report by Kullander" and the famous Rossi-­‐Focardi
Paper". Here is independent evidence supporting the reality of the Dr. Andrea
Rossi's E-­‐Cat Cold Fusion technology. The report is by Sven Kullander the
Chairman of the Science Academy of Sweden and Professor Emeritus of the
University of Uppsala (Sweden); Hanno Essen is Prof. of Nuclear Engineering at
the University of Stockholm (Sweden). These gentlemen are experts in their
field, and have reviewed the data as an independent peer review, lending
credibility to the process.

Quoted from E-Cat Technology.