Or why I will never love anything as much as higher education loves forming a new committee.
The romantic vision of the university as a site of learning, scholarship, and social progress is one that is in stark contrast with the reality of the modern for-profit model of higher education. The application of neoliberal public policy and the import of for-profit business models into the governance and administrative structures of universities has normalised market logic as a guiding force within the institution. From rising tuition costs to the erosion of labour rights and academic freedom, there are countless illustrations of the impacts of this transformation.
Within the university there are spaces where the hard work of resisting these structures takes place, but the logic that underpins the university’s approach to social issues is one that co-opts progressive language into a hollow corporate rebranding campaign. There are few things that exemplify this as much as higher education’s obsession with working groups, committees, and task forces.
Any issue—from racism, sexism, sexual harassment, housing, tuition, or complicity in repression and occupation—is met with a call for discussion, review and vague gestures towards future action. These discussions and reviews are always “ongoing” and if they seem like they don’t result in systemic change it is because they are designed precisely to that end. Anyone who has been involved in any of these institutionally mediated or university-led working reading groups can testify to the fact that more often than not, the conclusion of these groups is to create more sub-committees or task forces that will keep the review going. Rarely do they lead to concrete and visible changes in institutional structures.
“These discussions and reviews are always “ongoing” and if they seem like they don’t result in systemic change it is because they are designed precisely to that end.”
This tendency is not unique to higher education and can be observed in every organisation, from police departments to corporations. Alex V. Green refers to this tendency as the “the Having Conversations Industrial Complex” and situates it as an integral aspect of liberal political culture. As Green aptly puts it, “the only role of the conversation is to generate more conversations.” It takes different forms depending on the institution, but in universities, the formation of committees and working groups is one of the primary modes of operation.
Working groups, task forces, and committees established by the university may consult with student and faculty representatives but these groups are beholden to commercial interests and administrations that benefit from maintaining the status quo. Committees are designed to exhaust and take up the time of people who want to challenge these incentives and push for structural change. Student representatives are thrown into a corporate environment dominated by staff or people who are members of administrative boards, without tools to navigate the discussion. Those who do manage to overcome these challenges and speak have their concerns and ideas “acknowledged” and are met with promises that the university will “strive towards improvement” but almost never have any concrete demands met. There are exceptions, but they usually do not come through institutionally sanctioned methods and structures.
The university leverages the fact that they have people speaking up or representatives from across the aisle in these working groups in order to display their good intentions and integrity, while obscuring the reality of the situation. Universities perform transparency and accountability without having to materially enact either thing. These institutions are able to reap the commercial, social, and political benefits of committing to diversity and inclusion without requiring them to commit to taking a meaningful stance on issues. Those who refuse to participate in university sanctioned groups and choose to operate outside these structures are often framed in the public discourse as partisan, selfish, and dismissed as people uninterested in engaging in “dialogue.”
“Universities perform transparency and accountability without having to materially enact either thing.”
This is not unique to any particular higher educational institution. It is something that is clearly visible to anyone who has proximity to the day-to-day workings of universities. The extent of repression or obfuscation varies across different universities and countries, but the fundamental commitment to keeping things in a state of inertia is shared by many contemporary institutes of higher education. The focus is on individual betterment underpinned by a profit motive, and any real interrogation of the oppressive structures and inequalities within the university rarely aligns with these goals. There is no denying that participating in these working groups gives you access and a front seat to seeing these structures in operation. However, when it comes to the question of whether or not the various working groups, committees, and sub-committees are designed to work towards transforming those power structures, the answer is, more often than not, a resounding no.