Abstract
Chapter 1 frames the collection in terms of its themes and common threads, situating a multi- and cross-disciplinary volume in its intellectual contexts. Essentially part of a larger critique of the neoliberal university—and situated within the scholarship and ‘Jeremiads’ of recent years (including work by Forsyth, Hil, Collini, Taylor, Smyth, and others)—the volume takes this further and engages with popular-cultural, literary, and other imaginings of academia and higher education that are not aware of this broader ideological framework and stem instead from a romanticised or imagined version of what the academy or university/college should be, or is dimly remembered to have been. We also therefore situate the volume in the broader context of the idealised university in literature and culture, including the ‘Campus Novel’ phenomenon of the twentieth century, as well as the teen-oriented ‘College Movie’ phenomenon of the 1970s and beyond. Forays into Colin Dexter’s ‘Inspector Morse’ novels (and the famous TV adaptations starring John Thaw), as well as lesser-known works—such as Robert Barnard’s Death of An Old Goat (1974), set at the University of New England, Armidale—feature in what is the first sustained literature review of its kind. The chapter draws together all the otherwise disparate chapters to show that there has been (and is today) a significant groundswell of popular-cultural questioning regarding the past, present, and future purpose of the university, academia, and higher education, that should not be lost on policy makers, academics, or students, as we enter a period of increased uncertainty for the Anglophone Academy.
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Notes
- 1.
National Center for Education Statistics, College Enrollment Rates. Condition of Education. US Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, 2022, at: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cpb/college-enrollment-rate; Bureau of the Census, “School Enrollment in the United States, 1970”, Current Population Reports—Population Characteristics, Washington, DC: United States Department of Commerce, 5 March 1971, p.2, at: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/1970/demo/p20-215.pdf
- 2.
Pal Bolton, Education: Historical Statistics, Westminster: House of Commons Library, 27 November 2012, p.20, at: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN04252/SN04252.pdf; Ed Castell and Daniel Wake, Higher Education in Facts and Figures: 2021, London: Universities UK, 13 December 2021 (last updated 10 February 2022), at: https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/what-we-do/policy-and-research/publications/higher-education-facts-and-figures-2021
- 3.
Christopher Hughes, “Higher education in Australia—statistics & facts”, Statista, 17 September 2021, at: https://www.statista.com/topics/6790/higher-education-in-australia/#topicHeader__wrapper
- 4.
Martin Trow, “Reflections on the Transition from Mass to Universal Higher Education”, Daedalus, 99: 1, (The Embattled University), 1970, pp.1–42; Martin Trow, Twentieth-Century Higher Education: Elite to Mass to Universal, Michael Burrage (ed.), Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.
- 5.
UNESCO, World Declaration on Higher Education for the Twenty-First Century: Vision and Action, Paris: UNESCO, 1998, at: http://www.un-documents.net/wdhe21c.htm
- 6.
Terry Eagleton, “The death of universities”, The Guardian, 18 December 2010, at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/17/death-universities-malaise-tuition-fees; Susan Wright and Cris Shore (eds), Death of the Public University? Uncertain Futures for Higher Education in the Knowledge Economy, Oxford & New York: Berghahn, 2017; Adam Harris, “Here’s How Higher Education Dies”, The Atlantic, 5 June 2018, at: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/06/heres-how-higher-education-dies/561995/; Peter Fleming, Dark Academia: How Universities Die, London: Pluto Press, 2021.
- 7.
Wayne Errington and Peter Van Onselen, John Howard: The Biography, Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2007, pp.259, 377–378, 389–390; Frank Bongiorno, Dreamers and Schemers: A Political History of Australia, Collingwood: La Trobe University Press/Black Inc., 2022, p.387.
- 8.
Will Woodward and Rebecca Smithers, “Clarke dismissed medieval historians”, The Guardian, 9 May 2003, at: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/may/09/highereducation.politics
- 9.
Charles Homer Haskins, The Rise of Universities, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1923, p.2; Aleksander Gieysztor, “Chapter 4: Management and Resources”, A History of the University in Europe Volume 1: Universities in the Middle Ages ed. H. De Ridder Symoens, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp.108–136
- 10.
Rainer Christoph Schwinges, “Chapter 6: Admission”, A History of the University in Europe Volume 1: Universities in the Middle Ages ed. H. De Ridder Symoens, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp.195–202.
- 11.
In Hamlet (c.1600), Shakespeare established Horatio’s learned credentials by associating him with the University of Wittenberg (founded 1502). This was the home institution of Martin Luther, as well as Philipp Melanchthon. This was also the alma mater of the eponymous hero of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (c.1593).
- 12.
Elaine Showalter, Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and Its Discontents, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, p.6.
- 13.
Richard Scully, British Images of Germany: Admiration, Antagonism & Ambivalence, 1860–1914, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp.88, 100–101.
- 14.
Showalter, Faculty Towers, p.2.
- 15.
Showalter, Faculty Towers, p.2.
- 16.
Harriet Alexander, “University head charged with assaulting 16-year-old schoolgirl”, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 August 2022, at: https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/university-head-charged-with-assaulting-16-year-old-schoolgirl-20220803-p5b6zi.html; Jamie Doward, “Revealed: British university vice-chancellors’ five-star expenses”, The Guardian, 25 February 2018, at: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/feb/24/vice-chancellors-expenses-scandal-channel-4-dispatches-universities; CBC, “Amit Chakma, Western University president, ‘deeply sorry’ for $924K salary”, CBC News, 10 April 2015, at: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/amit-chakma-western-university-president-deeply-sorry-for-924k-salary-1.3028389
- 17.
“Jeremiad” literature is labelled as such by: Anthony Grafton, “Our Universities: Why Are They Failing?”, The New York Review, 24 November 2011, at: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/11/24/our-universities-why-are-they-failing/; and Hannah Forsyth, A History of the Modern Australian University, Sydney: NewSouth, 2014, p.5; the classic “Jeremiads” are probably: Anthony T. Kronman Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007; Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011; Richard Hil, Whackademia: An Insider’s Account of the Troubled University, Sydney: NewSouth, 2012; and John Smyth, The Toxic University: Zombie Leadership, Academic Rock Stars and Neoliberal Ideology, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
- 18.
Forsyth, “The end of the golden age (if there was one)”, History of the Modern Australian University, Chapter 5. Set in an idyllic Oxford, “Et in Arcadia Ego” is the first book of: Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited, Camberwell, Vic.: Penguin, 2009 [1945], pp.23–143.
- 19.
Hazard Adams, The Academic Tribes, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1976; Tony Becher, Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Culture of Disciplines, Buckingham: Open University Press, 1989; Tony Becher and Paul Trowler, Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Culture of Disciplines, Buckingham: Open University Press/SRHE, 2001.
- 20.
Jelena Brankovic, “Satire, Resignation and Anger around Higher Education Rankings and Wankings”, ECHERBlog, 7 January 2019, at: https://echer.org/higher-education-rankings-and-wankings/; Jorge Cham, PhD: Piled Higher and Deeper, 1997–2016, at: https://phdcomics.com/; Tiphaine Riviere, Notes on a Thesis, Francesca Barrie (trans.), London: Jonathan Cape, 2016.
- 21.
Jeffrey R. Young, “Satirical Takes on Higher Ed and Why They Matter”, EdSurge Podcast, 3 September 2019, at: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-09-03-satirical-takes-on-higher-ed-and-why-they-matter
- 22.
Young, “Satirical Takes on Higher Ed”.
- 23.
Bethan Michael-Fox and Kay Calver, “Dark Comedies/Dark Universities: Negotiating the Neoliberal Institution in British Satirical Comedies The History Man (1981), A Very Peculiar Practice (1986–1988), and Campus (2011)”, in Richard Scully and Marcus Harmes (eds), Academia and Higher Learning in Popular Culture, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2023, pp.202.
- 24.
John Warner, quoted in: Young, “Satirical Takes on Higher Ed”.
- 25.
The Jedi Temple and the quasi-religious order it supports can be interpreted as an institution of higher learning on the premodern, monastic model. Its aloof and dysfunctional Council bears many resemblances to the peak governance bodies of some modern universities.
- 26.
Amarpal Biring, “5 Blunders That Ruined J.J Abrams’ Star Trek And Destroyed The Franchise”, Whatculture, 19 September 2012, at: https://whatculture.com/film/15-blunders-that-ruined-j-j-abrams-star-trek-and-destroyed-the-franchise; Alice Rose Dodds, “Star Trek: The Fan Backlash To The J.J. Abrams Films Explained”, Game Rant, 12 October 2022, at: https://gamerant.com/star-trek-fan-backlash-jj-abrams-films-explained/
- 27.
Elaine Showalter, Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and Its Discontents, 2005, p.2.
- 28.
Sandra Weber and Claudia Mitchell, That’s Funny You Don’t Look Like a Teacher! Interrogating Images, Identity, And Popular Culture, London: Routledge, 1995.
- 29.
The Chair’s Professor Bill Dobson (played by Jay Duplass)—a widower with a child being given far too much leeway in his personal as well as professional life—occasioned the need for at least one stiff drink… further compounding the irony.
- 30.
Conan O’Brien, Commentary on “Homer Goes to College”, The Simpsons—the Complete Fifth Season, DVD, Twentieth-Century Fox, 2004.
- 31.
Showalter, Faculty Towers, p.2
- 32.
John Singleton, quoted in Craigh Barboza (ed.), John Singleton: Interviews, Jackson: University Press, of Mississippi, 2009, p.68.
- 33.
Singleton, Interviews, p.67.
- 34.
Philip Tew, “Review: Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and its Discontents”, Modern Language Review, 102: 3, July 2007, p.845, points-out that Showalter omits Willa Cather’s works (including The Professor’s House, 1925), as well as Tom Sharpe’s Porterhouse Blue (1974), Howard Jacobson’s Coming from Behind (1983), and Hanif Kureishi’s The Black Album (1995).
- 35.
Showalter, Faculty Towers, p.1.
- 36.
Showalter, Faculty Towers.
- 37.
“Revealed: The emails dripping in poison that dons at Oxford’s most prestigious college tried to cover up—including one which read, ‘Think of the Morse episode we could make when his wrinkly body is found!’”, Daily Mail, 16 February 2020, at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8008293/Think-Morse-episode-make-wrinkly-body-Oxford-donssay-plot.html
- 38.
Showalter, Faculty Towers, pp.17 ff.
- 39.
Alison Hoddinott, Women, Oxford & Novels of Crime (Brandl & Schlesinger, Blackheath, 2018), p.33.
- 40.
John S. Ryan, “‘Just some childish itch to play detective?’ Robert Barnard: Armidale’s sometime author of detective fiction”, Biblionews and Australian Notes & Queries, 31 (4), December 2005, pp.126–156.
- 41.
Ryan, “Just some childish itch to play detective?”, pp.131 & 135. Indeed, the late Emeritus Professor John S. Ryan was notoriously irritated that Barnard had not featured a caricature of him in Death of an Old Goat. Ryan was hardly more cheered by J. R. R. Tolkien’s semi-scathing reference to his analysis of Lord of the Rings “in a nonsensical article by J. S. Ryan” (see J. R. R. Tolkien, Letter to Mr Rang, August 1967, in Humphrey Carpenter (ed.), The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981, pp.379–80.
- 42.
Although more a satire of Australia and Australians, Eric Idle’s 1970 “Bruces Sketch” for Monty Python’s Flying Circus contains elements of satire directed at the pretensions of Australian higher education.
- 43.
Showalter, Faculty Towers, p.71.
- 44.
Showalter, Faculty Towers, p.71.
- 45.
Malcolm Bradbury, The Modern British Novel, 1878–2001, London: Penguin, 2001, p.339.
- 46.
Malcolm Bradbury, The History Man, London: Arrow, 1985, p.29.
- 47.
Marcus Harmes, “Humanities and the Politics of Higher Education in 1980s Popular Culture”, History of Humanities, 7: 2, Fall 2022, p.296.
- 48.
Sergio Angelini, “History Man, The (1981)”, BFI screenonline, 2003–14, at: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/803414/index.html
- 49.
The description of 1981 comes from: Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, “1981”, The Rest Is History, Goalhanger Podcasts, 16 November 2020.
- 50.
Robert Knights, Interviewed for “Film of the Book (The History Man)”, BBC2, 17 March 1986, at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcjqNaExUwo
- 51.
On Wyman, see: Alison Herman, “The Harvard PhD Turned Screenwriter Behind Netflix’s Hit ‘The Chair’”, 24 August 2021, at: https://www.theringer.com/tv/2021/8/24/22638728/the-chair-netflix-annie-julia-wyman-amanda-peet
- 52.
Laura Detmering, “‘Just Tell Me the Rules, and I Will Follow’: Active Viewership in Dan Harmon’s Community”, Studies in Popular Culture, 37: 1, Fall 2014, p.53.
- 53.
Nettie Brock, “Greendale Hyperreality”, in Ann-Gee Lee (ed.), A Sense of Community: Essays on the Television Series and its Fandom, Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2014, p.37. The clash between image and reality as far as students are concerned is covered nicely in: Genie Giaimo, “From the Guest Editor”, Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, 15: 1, 2017, p.1, at: https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/62931/329_Giaimo_-_PDF_final%5b1%5d.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y
- 54.
For a destabilisation of this, see: Lindsy Lawrence, “Inculcating Victorian Masculinities
at ‘Loser College’: Jeff Winger’s Male Poses”, in Ann-Gee Lee (ed.), A Sense of Community: Essays on the Television Series and its Fandom, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014, pp.65–81.
- 55.
Dean Pelton, quoted in: Shannon Wells-Lassagne, “Transforming the traditional sitcom: Abed in Community”, TV/Series, 1: Les Séries télévisées américaines contemporaines: entre la fiction, les faits, et le réel, 15 May 2012, at: http://journals.openedition.org/tvseries/1560; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/tvseries.1560
- 56.
Tully Barnett and Ben Kooyman, “Repackaging Popular Culture: Commentary and Critique in Community”, Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network, 5: 2, 2012, at: https://doi.org/10.31165/nk.2012.52.272
- 57.
Lawrence, “Inculcating Victorian Masculinities”, p.72.
- 58.
Robert Barnard, Death of an Old Goat, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985; [Eric Idle], “Bruces Sketch”, in Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, Monty Python’s Flying Circus—Just the Words, Volume 1, London: Methuen—Mandarin, 1990, pp.294–296.
- 59.
Bethan-Fox and Culver, “Dark Comedies/Dark Universities”, p.202.
- 60.
Douglas Adams, Doctor Who—Shada. The Six Original Scripts [10 September 1979], BBC, 1992, p.19/1.
- 61.
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Valley of Fear, New York: A. L. Burt, 1914, p.33.
- 62.
Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, “Movie review: Mona Lisa Smile,” American Historical Review, 91: 3, 2004, p.1135.
- 63.
Marianne A. Larsen, “Troubling the discourse of teacher centrality: A comparative perspective”, Journal of Education Policy, 25: 2, 2010, pp.207–231.
- 64.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2018, pp.3–4.
- 65.
Roberta M. Hall and Bernice R. Sadler’s influential 1982 report The Classroom Climate: A Chilly One for Women?
- 66.
Sarah Scoles, “Astronomers are Finally Doing Something About Sexual Harassment”, The Atlantic, 6 January 2016, at: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/01/gender-discrimination-astronomy/422817/
- 67.
Kathryn B. H. Clancy, Robin G. Nelson, Julienne N. Rutherford, and Katie Hinde, “Survey of Academic Field Experiences (SAFE): Trainees Report Harassment and Assault”, PLoS ONE, 9: 7, 2014, p.4.
- 68.
Gramsci’s concept of “organic intellectuals” suffuses his Prison Notebooks; see: Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, London: ElecBook, 1999, at: http://courses.justice.eku.edu/pls330_louis/docs/gramsci-prison-notebooks-vol1.pdf
- 69.
Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma, London: Vintage, 2014, p.148.
- 70.
In The Chair, Taylor’s character, Professor Joan Hambling, enacts many of the ultimate fantasies of the put-upon academic, including burning her student evaluations and tracking-down and telling a snarky reviewer on RateMyProfessor exactly what she thinks of him and his attitude. Without offending anyone, she also manages to become chair of her department, and immediately begins reforming her layabout colleagues in crucial ways, without surrendering to managerialism. That said, her triumphs come only after experiencing across her career all the ageist, misogynist, sexist, abuse-laden tribulations faced by women in academia.
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Scully, R., Harmes, M.K. (2023). Unseen Universities and Seen Academics: An Introduction. In: Harmes, M.K., Scully, R. (eds) Academia and Higher Learning in Popular Culture. Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32350-8_1
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