Wednesday 7 October, 7.00pm until 8.30pm, British Library, London
Venue: Conference Centre, British Library, St Pancras, 96 Euston Road, London, NW1 2DB
Tickets: £7.50 (£5 concessions) per person. Tickets are available from the Academy of Ideas website.
‘The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future. He must be an university of knowledges.’
Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘The American Scholar’
What does scholarship mean today? The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is often viewed as outmoded. A recent education minister infamously dismissed ‘the medieval concept of a community of scholars seeking truth’ as a ‘bit dodgy’. The scholar ensconced in a library, surrounded by dusty books, has given way to the a results-focused researcher, contributing to the economic and social well-being of the nation. This goes beyond the traditional two cultures divide: ‘curiosity-driven’ arts and humanities research and pure science are both belittled as self-indulgent, trumped by ‘impact’ projects. Some fear now universities are just part of Lord Peter Mandelson’s super-ministry, whose title contains neither the word education nor universities, every academic will be beholden to business. Already intellectual inquiry is justified in terms of outcomes and consequences. Scholars must prove themselves as social-includers, skills-brokers, community coherers and contributors to UK Plc, and demonstrate how their subjects make students employable.
But are these trends as philistine as critics imply? Perhaps it is mere romanticism to yearn for the days of bumbling boffins. The modern world faces urgent problems that cannot be resolved in musty archives. As the competition for public funding intensifies, surely publicly-funded scholars have an obligation to make their work relevant. And the fact that all political parties share an enthusiasm for evidence-based policy surely shows at last they value academics’ contribution to society.
Is evidence-based research in the humanities and social science inching out theoretical work? Is output-driven research in the sciences limiting experimentation and serendipitous discovery? Or will the ‘new’ targeted research mean less waste and more public support for academics’ work? Is scholarship still essential to ‘an university of knowledges’, where ideas about what it means to be human are developed and contested? What – if any – is the distinction between the old-fashioned scholar and the 21st century researcher? And how do scholars and researchers preserve the contributions of the past, inspire the hopes of the future and unearth new knowledge in the present?
The session will be introduced by Dr Joanna Newman, head, higher education, British Library.
Professor Mary Beard professor of classics, University of Cambridge; fellow, Newnham College; classics editor, The Times Literary Supplement; author, A Don's Life | |
Professor Colin Blakemore professor of neuroscience at the universities of Oxford and Warwick; chair, Neuroscience Research Partnership, Singapore; chair, general advisory committee on science, Food Standards Agency | |
Professor Colin Lawson director, Royal College of Music; period clarinettist; author, Mozart: Clarinet Concerto and Brahms: Clarinet Quintet | |
Professor Gloria Laycock professor of crime science and director, UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science | |
David Sweeney director, research, innovation and skills, Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) | |
Chair: | |
Claire Fox
director, Academy of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze; author, I Find That Offensive |
Research pays off – and that well-researched fact should be music to the ears of Treasury officials in these straitened times.
Colin Blakemore, The Times, 9 October 2009Scholars have too long acquiesced to policy agendas. They must reassert the value of scholarship for its own sake, argues Claire Fox.
Claire Fox, Times Higher Education, 1 October 2009US universities are part of the fabric of their communities. Robin Hambleton says UK institutions should emulate them
Robin Hambleton, Times Higher Education, 1 October 2009The demise of the silly survey strikes at the heart of being civilised.
David Mitchell, Observer, 27 September 2009Like the society to which it has played the faithful servant, the university is bankrupt. This bankruptcy is not only financial. It is the index of a more fundamental insolvency, one both political and economic, which has been a long time in the making.
we want everything, 24 September 2009The world economic crisis and the election of Barack Obama will change the future of higher education. Even as universities, both public and private, face unanticipated financial constraints, the president has called on them to assist in solving problems from health care delivery to climate change to economic recovery.
Drew Gilpin Faust, New York Times, 1 September 2009By insisting our universities' sole role is to fire the economy, we have lost sight of their more civilising purpose
Thomas Docherty, Times Higher Education, 4 June 2009It is a myth to believe that, in higher education, business-facing activity and academic rigour are mutually exclusive.
Gill Nicholls, Guardian, 26 May 2009It is the marketisation of higher education, its transformation into a glorified job-training scheme, that sustains the case for tuition fees.
Tim Black, spiked, 18 March 2009'Increasingly students are being asked to pay for the costs of the regulation of higher education rather than education itself. Access to Higher Education has become more widely available: the implications of that change are the concern of this book.'
Mary Evans, Continuum, 22 September 2005