The Guardian 28 February, 2007
Culture and Life
by Rob Gowland
A form of user-pays education
A week or so ago, the Centre for Continuing Education at the University of Sydney distributed a glossy, full-colour Guide to its courses for Autumn (March to May). The Guide was included as a supplement in The Sydney Morning Herald.
We live in a capitalist society in Australia where everything is deemed to be a commodity, including education, so the Centre’s courses come with a price tag.
The description of each course included the fee each student would have to pay for this privileged opportunity to learn: $595 for a two-day course in "Business process design and implementation" or $395 for a one-day course on "How to plan and deliver memorable presentations", ranging down to $155 for a six-week course on "Bronze Age Greece".
The Guide ran to 32 pages, of which no less than the first five were given over to courses calculated to bring in "business leaders" and their corporate dollars: "Developing a voice that sells", "Doing business in India", "Embedding change in your organisation", "Strategic marketing planning", and lots more of the same.
"Developing a voice that sells" is one of three one-day courses (each costing $395) being given by a certain Michael Kelly. Mr Kelly is described as a "business pitch consultant" (now that’s specialisation).
He has a Master of Science degree in speech pathology, but I suspect of more relevance to his corporate clients is his Diploma of Marketing.
Another course, "Strategic negotiation skills" (over two days for $595), is given by Tony Hughes, whom the Guide describes as a "business leader" with "over 25 years of business experience in Australia and internationally".
He is also the developer of something called RSVPSelling. That’s a registered trademark (hence the crazy spelling), but for those of us who have never heard of it, the University brochure helpfully explains that RSVPSelling "promotes business and sales strategy as a way of thinking". Say what?
Moreover, Tony’s course, we are told, "delivers an ideal blend of practical communication skills and proven methodologies for strategic selling and negotiation in today’s business world". Gosh!
Actually, the previous paragraph really underlines the role and purpose of higher education as it is perceived by capitalism: nothing more than an aid to business.
Under "Marketing, Sales & Events" for example, the Guide lists several courses including "Strategic marketing planning", "Managing special events" and "Services marketing".
The Guide’s description of the last-named discloses that, for the Centre for Continuing Education, health and education are not public services, as you or I might have assumed, but "service-based industries" (my italics). A subtle, but significant, difference.
Capitalism is keen to make everything into a commodity, something that can be bought and sold. Banks and insurance companies already talk about their various services (those that they still provide) as "financial products".
To capitalism, health care and education are simply industries producing less tangible commodities than your usual physical-product based industries but still needing to be effectively marketed if maximum profit is to be achieved. And the Centre for Continuing Education is there to help.
The Centre is no doubt as deficient in government funding as any other sector of tertiary education and consequently must be under constraints to make its courses as close to self-funding as possible.
In these conditions, it is hardly surprising that the Centre provides so many courses designed directly to benefit or interest business, for business has the money to pay for them.
Significantly, a page devoted to computerised office skills — "Managing your computer files and folders", "Advanced operations with Powerpoint" — is headed "Business Applications". Why?
Surely these skills are also of interest to non-business interests, such as trade unions, professionals, academics, social activists and many others? Of course, but businesses are the end users most likely to actually pay to send their staff along to take the courses.
Such "user pays" education would appeal enormously to the well heeled and their political parties. Inevitably, it will also influence the approach to some of the subject categories, consciously or otherwise.
The mixture of courses under "History" in the Centre’s Guide begin with "A history of Satan: antiquity to 1600". This one day course takes place, perhaps appropriately, on April Fools’ Day.
But why does it stop at 1600? So as to avoid trouble with the new, aggressive Christian fundamentalists of our day, for whom Satan is very real? One hopes not.
Another course that seems to stop rather early in its chosen period is "Unravelling the Middle East conflict". This is a course in six 2-hour sessions that begins with "a look at the long history of Arabs in Palestine and the concepts of Zionism and ‘Eretz Israel’".
It also looks at the effects of WW2 on both the Jews and the Arabs. This potentially very valuable course concludes however with "a look at the First Arab-Israeli War of 1947-48", thus conveniently sidestepping any consideration of the role of US imperialism in fostering and utilizing post-War Arab-Israeli conflict.
"America: the reluctant superpower" is the risible title for a six-week course that seeks to explain the rise of US imperialism not as a matter of economics and class politics but as "the legacy [of] the vision and will of two men — both named Roosevelt". ’Nuff said, really.
Also self-explanatory as a course title is "The Red Tsars: dreams and reality". The notes identify the "Red Tsars" as "dictators from Lenin to Stalin and beyond", although the one day course focuses on "Putin’s Russia".
First claiming that "The Red Tsars have wielded enormous and often destructive power", the notes go on to ruefully complain that "many people still retain faith in the doctrines they espoused".
Now why would that be, I wonder?