REJOICE, 0 PHILISTINES!

ALL THE press comment on the Dearing Report on Higher Education has concen- trated on what is close to the hearts of middle England — tuition fees. That is understandable, but there is more to worry about in Dearing — the very nature of uni- versities.

`Higher education', the very term is like a knell. It brings to mind that cultural Gobi desert that is the Times Higher Edu- cational Supplement; the Grimpen mire that is the Guardian's education pull-out; the education apparatchiks speaking their Babylonish dialect; the 'quality assessors' — all of whom (to adopt some words of Empson's) are uncertain whether to lift their leg against the flower of learning or to root it up altogether.

It was not ever thus. You can still read with pleasure and instruction Matthew Arnold's writings on education, including his reports as an inspector of schools, Newman's The Idea of a University, and even (heaven help us!) the Robbins report.

We all remember the Robbins report, which led to the first great modern expan- sion in university education. At least, we remember Kingsley Amis's response to it: `More will mean worse.' Robbins was regarded (by people such as F.R. Leavis) as a philistine betrayer of the idea of a univer- sity.

Yet whenever Dearing quotes a para- graph or two of Robbins, it is as though flowers suddenly bloom in a wilderness. Here is Robbins on 'breadth' in education as against the 'depth' that used to be regarded as proper to work at a university: `There are unquestionably men and women for whom study that involves penetration in depth is naturally appropriate. They are eager to get to the heart of the subject . . . Nevertheless, there is another sort of mind that . . . is more likely to be at home in broader fields suited to more moderate depth.'

What Robbins wanted was Comparative Literature at Sussex — and he got it. You can see from his words exactly why he wanted it. He writes of a world in which there are 'young men and women' with cer- tain aptitudes, interests and limitations. Robbins had opinions and made value judgments in words far removed from the computer-generated prose of the Dearing report.

Robbins also believed that universities should transmit a common culture. Dear- ing is fashionably agnostic about that. Yet he does believe that education should instill the values of democracy, apparently not realising that representative govern- ment and what goes with it is ultimately unintelligible outside the particular tradi- tions of our common culture.

Dearing has nothing so breezy as Rob- bins, no 'young men and women', no strik- ing opinions of any sort, certainly none about the nature of universities. This is because his report is not really about uni- versities, but about that chimera 'higher education'. The chief villain here is the Tory government which engineered a 30 per cent increase in student numbers, imposed strict financial penalties on any institution which refused to conform, and yet did not find the money to pay for them.

Then John Major tried an on-the-cheap version of the Cana miracle: turning poly- technics into universities simply by chang- ing the name. It was a sufficient justification for Major that the distinction between universities and polys was 'snob- bish'.

Yet it was nothing of the sort. Polytech- nics, which did not demand any connection between teaching and research, were origi- nally set up to provide the best sort of vocational and technical training. But then they were too often encouraged to become down-market universities. The difference between academic education and vocation- al training remains as valid as it ever was, but the Tory reforms made it objectionable to distinguish between the different sorts of 'university'.

John Henry Newman laboured mightily to arrive at his 'Idea of a University', to commend a liberal education as 'simply the cultivation of the intellect', to show how literature, philosophy and the sciences were examples of knowledge as its own end, and that a humane education makes each of us 'our own centre, and our minds the measure of all things'.

To adduce Newman in the Gobi world of 'higher education' is naturally to invite rage and ridicule. (There is no Newman in the Dearing index between 'Netherlands' and 'New Zealand'.) Poor old Newman was, of course, frightfully long-winded. He took about 500 pages to explain what a university might be. Dearing manages it in one sentence: 'In our view, the important defining characteristic of a university is the power to award taught and research degrees which then carry the university's name.' Can there have been anything more brilliantly concise since Aquinas defined life as 'self-movement'?

Dearing goes on to doubt that 'the spread of academic disciplines offered' has any bearing on whether an institution is a university. Yet the range of disciplines is crucial to the notion of a universitas. A `university' which did not include research and teaching in philosophy, pure mathe- matics, theoretical physics, history and classics would not be a university at all. The range of disciplines may change. Some may be dropped (Aristotelian logic) and others added (English literature). But Newman offered guidance on these changes. The guiding idea of a university is liberal education — i.e. subjects at the core of which is knowledge as its own end and which make each of us 'our own cen- tre'. Law and medicine at a university are not simply vocational subjects, but also pursue knowledge as its own end, which is why some universities have always com- pelled law students to study Roman law.

One cannot blame the Dearing report for failing to do more than glance at such ideas. It is saddled with 'higher education' — that pantomime horse in which univer- sities and the former polytechnics pull in opposite directions. It must bow before the new golden calf — the doctrine that all the current 'universities' were created equal. So any attempt to define humane learning, an academic education — in short, the Idea of a University — would invite the gravest of all charges: elitism.

That is why the report, for all its 467 pages, is curiously empty. Why was it com- missioned at all? Presumably it was to give covering fire as the government went ahead with plans to raise money from stu- dents. Most of the rest is padding, with a stiffening of Thatcherism.

There are the usual managerial ideas, including the thoughtless demand that the governing bodies of universities should be small so that they can take decisions quick- ly. Universities have always been run by the communities of their scholars, however large, who take informed decisions in the interests of their institutions, based on a knowledge of their history. Then there are pious reaffirmations of the old ideals 'We do not accept a purely instrumental approach to education' — mixed with con- stant obeisances to the demands of employ- ers, and with the constant ground-bass that `higher education' increases the wealth of the nation.

There are magnificent banalities: 'Sec- tion 4.52: social and cultural changes over the last 30 years have been profound.' Some of the most delicious tritenesses are about research: 'Medical research is designed to lead to advances in medical treatment which improve the health of the nation . . . Research in the arts and humanities contributes to growing indus- tries in tourism, entertainment and leisure.'

Yes, indeed. I do remember once when a group of Dutch 'students', encouraged to sample some Cambridge lectures, turned up en masse to a course I was giving on `The Metaphysics of Sexuality'. Politely mystified, they listened to an account of St Augustine on concupiscence — not at all

`It's not exactly flat, captain . . the sort of thing they had hoped for. But I now can see that my own labours did con- tribute their mite to tourism, entertain- ment and leisure.

Marooned up the 'higher education' creek without a paddle or an opinion, Dearing sometimes mentions a question- able idea and just leaves it at that. So a Danish education spokesman figures in the report, with his sinisterly succinct require- ment that higher education must 'assist in creating a sustainable, economically sound democratic society, where few have too much and fewer too little'. Except that the rest of the 467 pages provide evidence to the contrary, I should at this point have suspected the report of irony.

Dearing also mentions the college fees at Oxford and Cambridge, which are high- er than those elsewhere, costing the nation the grand total of £70 million. He con- cludes that 'society' — i.e. the government — must decide whether these fees are jus- tified as 'representing a good use of resources'. Since the whole genius of Oxford and Cambridge, which are demon- strably amongst the very best universities in the world, depends on their tutorial sys- tem, there can be no doubt that the fees are justified. But Dearing has no opinion, perhaps leaving it to Baroness Blackstone (reputed to be quivering with eagerness to destroy the system) to sabotage the com- mitment of the New Labour government to sustaining British centres of excellence.

And so to the proposal that has got all the attention in the press — graduates should pay back part of the cost of their tuition. Dearing's justification for that is simple: graduates earn on average more than others, so it is fair that they be charged for this 'value-added' aspect of their education.

It would be silly to reply that there is a God-given right to free higher education. There is clearly no such thing, and it is only since the war that free access to high- er education has been taken for granted. But the Dearing philosophy here shows itself in all its philistine muddle. Although the report does not actually say so, and although pious gestures are made in the opposite direction, the assumption is that education is all about making money.

But if it is true that people with degrees are not, in general, at the bottom of the earnings heap, what does that tell us? It does not tell us that their degree subjects were a training for jobs. It is an intrinsic outcome of a liberal education that it develops someone's mind and culture. Simply in doing that, it makes people more in control of their own lives, more their 'own centre'.

This runs contrary to the whole current mode of thought about education to say that this means that they are better people — but it is true. The reason why men with a degree in classics were thought fit to run the empire was not because knowledge of the Roman empire helped understand the British one. It was because people with a humane education were understood to be more complete human beings than those with a mere vocational training.

To say this now is to invite sniggers. Newman's idea that a liberal education produced the complete man (he actually said 'gentleman') is unintelligible to most educationists. But this is the only basis for valuing education; not that it increases national wealth, but that it is a good thing in itself that there are educated people what Coleridge called a 'clerisy'.

From the Butler Education Act onwards (and to some extent even before), it was assumed that children most suited to a higher academic education should receive scholarships. County Majors and State Scholarships were to pay virtually the whole cost of their time at university. To distinguish the academic elite in this way has no place in the Dearing report and clearly goes against the grain of current `higher education'.

In past generations people with excellent degrees in academic subjects might go into school teaching, the church or the public services. They and others like them were Coleridge's 'clerisy' who never reaped sub- stantial rewards, but who were of immense benefit to society. The equivalents of such people still exist. Make them pay for their education if necessary, but do not pretend that there is any higher justification for that beyond the need to find money.

Matthew Arnold is not much in vogue nowadays, but he is relevant. Arnold thought that 'culture' was a value that included and went beyond education, that culture completed both the individual and society. Academic study requires (in the words of Michael Oakeshott) qualities of `attention, concentration, patience, exact- ness, courage and intellectual honesty'. That is the character an individual has tra- ditionally been expected to acquire from a liberal education. But these are the very qualities that underlie the transmission of our culture, in philosophy, the arts, litera- ture and the sciences. So the loss of engagement with humane learning will inevitably also be the loss of that objectivity and spirit of enquiry which buttress our intellectual tradition. The whole tendency of 'higher education' is to loosen our hold on such values.

There is nothing wicked or pernicious in the Dearing report. Given the task it was set, it tries very hard to be moderate, unprejudiced and sensible. It is, neverthe- less, philistine, nugatory and pointless and will therefore be an authoritative docu- ment in the world of higher education. Don't blame Dearing. It is not his fault if no one believes in a humane education any more.