The University has had multiple competing social functions during its history. Let us consider three functions: the regulation of undergraduates, the regulation of scholars, and the community of scholarship. I will suggest that the regulatory type functions are at odds with the community functions.

Universities regulate undergraduates. Whether fractious potential clerics, or aristocratic and bourgeois children being “finished,” on incipient wage slaves being burdened with massive debt the lecture system chastises students with irrelevancies. In the current era many of the tools of pedagogical reform have been turned into chains. Progressive assessment is actually merely periodic summary assessment. Aims and methods statements duplicate the bland argument from authority of outdated longhand written lecture notes. Tutorials are lecture sized. This is make work, and labour discipline. For the scholars as much as the students. Only the rule of dons has been replaced with the rule of management mentality. For student and scholar coursework soaks up the year with things known to be useless. Think of all that unread feedback on essays submitted in week 3 to meet a “progressive assessment prior to course drop date” requirement?

In contrast the community of scholars has some problems. It is undisciplined and unruly. You might get a Luther whose theology is magisterial, the implications of which are 200 years of war. Disciplining this community is pretty important. Consider how output and quality metrics are used as labour discipline, effectively widget counting, rather than informing meta-analysis of research programme success or failure? Maybe review articles are now quoting impact factors, but I doubt it for my field. Impact is used to regulate who gets to be/remain a scholar. This is reasonably new, because you could always count student enrolment and use it to demand money from the outside world, but now that paper volume and cites are counted for money, the regulation or scholars intrudes more deeply into the non-teaching periods.

So while it was true in the past that the real work was done outside of teaching, it is less true now, as peer and disciplinary regulation of communities of scholars has commodified research and brought managerial and close scrutiny to this area of work.

The University has had multiple competing social functions during its history. Let us consider three functions: the regulation of undergraduates, the regulation of scholars, and the community of scholarship. I will suggest that the regulatory type functions are at odds with the community functions.

Universities regulate undergraduates. Whether fractious potential clerics, or aristocratic and bourgeois children being “finished,” on incipient wage slaves being burdened with massive debt the lecture system chastises students with irrelevancies. In the current era many of the tools of pedagogical reform have been turned into chains. Progressive assessment is actually merely periodic summary assessment. Aims and methods statements duplicate the bland argument from authority of outdated longhand written lecture notes. Tutorials are lecture sized. This is make work, and labour discipline. For the scholars as much as the students. Only the rule of dons has been replaced with the rule of management mentality. For student and scholar coursework soaks up the year with things known to be useless. Think of all that unread feedback on essays submitted in week 3 to meet a “progressive assessment prior to course drop date” requirement?

In contrast the community of scholars has some problems. It is undisciplined and unruly. You might get a Luther whose theology is magisterial, the implications of which are 200 years of war. Disciplining this community is pretty important. Consider how output and quality metrics are used as labour discipline, effectively widget counting, rather than informing meta-analysis of research programme success or failure? Maybe review articles are now quoting impact factors, but I doubt it for my field. Impact is used to regulate who gets to be/remain a scholar. This is reasonably new, because you could always count student enrolment and use it to demand money from the outside world, but now that paper volume and cites are counted for money, the regulation of scholars intrudes more deeply into the non-teaching periods.

So while it was true in the past that the real work was done outside of teaching, it is less true now, as peer and disciplinary regulation of communities of scholars has commodified research and brought managerial and close scrutiny to this area of work.