English Professors against QAA

Thomas Docherty, professor of English at Warwick University published a new book this year: The English Question or Academic Freedoms (Sussex Academic Press, 2008). The Guardian's Chris Arnot wrote a column that pit Docherty against some QAA advocates. 

Here's a quote from Docherty: "The QAA, for those of us who have suffered under its tawdry posturing, is a cancer that gnaws at the core of knowledge, value and freedom in education; its carcinogenic growth is now perhaps the greatest pervasive danger to the function of a university as a surviving institution," he writes. "It has presided over the valorisation and celebration of mediocrity, paradoxically at the very moment when it is allegedly assuring the public of the quality of education and universities ..."

and here's part of the riposte: "Hefce has defended its creation. "We strongly refute Professor Docherty's comments," says its director of learning and teaching, Dr Liz Beaty, "and have complete confidence in the way the QAA is carrying out its role." [my emphasis - JL] She points out that, in response to concerns about the administrative burden, the agency adopted a "light-touch" approach after 2001."

One of the features of the ripostes is that they call on a tawdry notion of evidence to refute Docherty's argument - look closely and you find that the way they comport themselves is the question, not the reason or logic of their act.  This is part of an attack on the real value of academic work, and the beginning of a slide into fakery (ie pretending to do something by going through the motions).   Arnot frames a clash of paradigms here.

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2240583,00.html


The book's title resonates with the important work of Conrad Russell: Academic Freedom (Routledge, 1993). http://www.atm.damtp.cam.ac.uk/people/mem/papers/LHCE/uk-higher-education.html