A tertiary odyssey

During the sixties, universities were full of eccentrics and vibrant ideas.

SENIOR ACADEMIC IN PEACE AND CONFLICT STUDIES, VICTORIA

There has to be something better than what we've got ... I honestly would not encourage my PhD students to work in a university. It would be a dereliction of duty on my part.

PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

A MAJOR NSW METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY

My personal odyssey through several universities in England and Australia was made on board a rather leaky vessel. The following account is, however, part of a much broader story about how today's universities have devolved into their current state – and what this means for academics who work in such places. At the very least, my own story reveals that significant changes have swept over the higher education sector both here and overseas, and that many of these changes have made life for many academics generally harder and less rewarding. My story begins in the post-hippy, pre-punk, glam rock days of the early 1970s, when I first pondered the thought of entering the hallowed halls of an English university.

Essex ahoy!

On a gloomy afternoon in late September 1973, I was keenly aware that my life was about to take a significant turn. As I waited outside a battered public telephone in one of Coventry's duller suburbs while my girlfriend phoned for the results of my Advanced-level examinations, the qualifications needed to enter university, I reflected on the consequences of either failure or success. Failure would mean a return to more modest ambitions, perhaps three years at a teacher training or local technical college. Success would augur an exhilarating joyride through the unknown world of higher education. After a few minutes of muffled conversation my girlfriend emerged from the booth to inform me that I had indeed obtained the grades I needed to go to Essex University. After much cavorting, kissing, hugging and the rest we proceeded to the local pub to get uproariously drunk. The next morning, over several cups of coffee and a sore head, I also reflected on the months of revision and high hopes that had at last been realised, and on the world – or at least parts of it – that I was about to leave behind.

As the son of working-class Polish migrants, and after having failed the dreaded 11-plus examination that placed me in a juvenile detention centre masquerading as a secondary school, the best I could hope for was an apprenticeship at one of Coventry's many car factories. Like most of my classmates, I had been subjected to a boot-camp education that was geared towards enslavement on the factory floor. To enforce discipline, pupils were caned ('whacked') on a regular basis, and periodically shunted into assemblies where our headmaster – with the rather misleading surname of Hope – would regale us on the need for good order, discipline and devotion to the Catholic faith.

The less-than-subliminal message from our teachers was that we were brawny and macho, occasionally funny – even lovably quirky – but with one or two exceptions, ultimately thick. Perfect material for the assembly line, we were the 'likely lads' so brilliantly described by Paul Willis in Learning to Labour. Our career horizons were rather like those of the working-class kids interviewed for Seven Up! – the first of the chronological, fly-on-the-wall documentary series of class aspirations in Britain. These aspirations rarely included anything approaching higher education: university was reserved for the posh end of town. In fact, had anyone cared to ask me, say around 1970, what a university was, I probably would have said it was an abattoir or bank.

But here I was, the first snotty-nosed kid from my latter-day industrial school to go to university. I chose to do – I could never bring myself to say 'read' – a degree in what, on the face of it, sounded rather boring: social studies. However, there was good reason for such a choice. As an aspirant mod in the late 1960s, I had taken a great deal of interest in youth cultures, mainly because I liked the clothes and music, and the chance to meet interesting young women. Stan Cohen, who went on to become an internationally renowned criminologist, was then a senior lecturer at Essex and had written a ground-breaking book about the mod movement called Folk Devils and Moral Panics. I was captivated by his eloquent analysis of how mods were demonised by the establishment, and for both narcissistic and intellectual reasons I wanted to know a lot more about young people, culture and identity – especially my own.

Duly enthused, off I went with my battered blue suitcase and brown duffle coat to the University of Essex, home of considerable riotous assembly in 1968 and still something of a leftist hot-house on the outskirts of the former Roman fortress town of Colchester. I was ensconced on the tenth floor of Tawney Tower, one of six hideous residential blocks constructed out of what looked like grey slate brick. With fourteen testosterone-charged young males to each floor, the experience of living in Tawney Tower was always likely to be interesting, and so it proved. There were frequent drug-laden parties, booze-ups, wrecked kitchens and sleepless nights to contend with. Silence was a rarity as the dulcet tones of Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd and Van Morrison could be heard day and night through the thin walls.

Given that my first year did not count towards my final degree, I was handed a license to thrill – nine months of parent-free, unrestrained hedonism and not a little intellectual discovery. In addition to spending considerable amounts of time in the student bar and subsequently recovering from hangovers, I joined the Socialist Workers Party, the Campaign for Real Ale and the highly active Apathy Society. (I was prevented from joining the Anti-Apartheid Group by the Socialist Workers Party because, as I was told by a Frederick Engels lookalike, it was a counter-revolutionary movement.) Obsessed with incoherent ideological questions, I spent many hours bent over the impenetrable – at least to me – works of Marx and Engels, attending long and boring meetings, and trying unsuccessfully to chat up female party-members. On campus, in pubs, common and student rooms, there was always a conversation to be had, an argument to pursue, a position to defend, and a protest to plan. I honed many irritating linguistic skills during this period – not the best asset for someone already infused with considerable arrogance. The student bar and cafeteria were at times the shadow hedonistic equivalent of the Enlightenment's salons, where students of mostly left-leaning political persuasions indulged in visions of a new world order.

In between such encounters I attended lectures delivered by a number of internationally recognised sociologists like Stan Cohen, Dennis Marsden, Peter...