As a child of the 70s and 80s I grew up listening to various people complain of ‘political correctness gone mad’.  However, although concerned I might somehow fall foul of some 1984 style thought police, I never seemed to make a mistake.  I’m not particularly subtle, not particularly politically adept and yet I seemed to avoid censure.  Entering the education profession I was even more amazed that I seemed to effortlessly manage not to offend.  This has developed into an ongoing curiosity about language and its usage.

What I have come to realise is that the phrase political correctness (PC) is both misused and misunderstood.  If we look first at its misuse we venture into the murky world of health and safety.  Amazingly people will describe actions by schools, such as the restricting of playing conkers, as political correctness.  Clearly the phrase is being used to broadly describe state intervention, however even in this interpretation it is misused.  When schools and other such bodies have banned activities it is not a matter of public policy but at the bequest of insurers.  Increasingly we live in a litigious time and with ‘no win no fee’ lawyers praying on the gullible and greedy insurers have to protect their funds.  It is not the case that you ‘can’t get insurance’ merely that the insurance will be too expensive.  Simply put each advert you see for no win no fee lawyers is another reason to think again about you organisation’s health and safety policies and procedures.

Next we have the misuse through confusion over language.  Did you know it is wrong to call our national flag ‘the Union Jack’.  Not, as I was once told, because it was gendered but simply because it is only a ‘Jack’ when it is flown from a ‘jack staff’ on a ship – for a nautical nation we can be quite ignorant of such things.  Of course this level of pedantry is unnecessary – Union Jack has entered common use.    Similar confusion exists around the terms Great Britain and United Kingdom.  The UK is not a politically correct version of GB.  GB refers to the island of England, Wales and Scotland excluding Northern Island, hence the use of the phrase ‘Great Britain and Northern Ireland’ to describe the UK (which also has that full title but is reduced to UK and includes NI when it is).     Confusingly at the beginning of the twentieth century, after the separation of the Irish Republic, the full name became The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.  Again we can be pedantic but that is all.

Returning to the health and safety theme we see a new heroism, a new patriotism, coming through.  We have of course all heard of the nurse who was forbidden from wearing a crucifix.  A clever use of language there.  The actual policy of the hospital was that no necklaces were allowed to be worn for health and safety reasons.  Yes the nurse had worn the necklace for years but now the rules had changed, largely for the reasons mentioned above.  This of course takes us on to the cases of shop assistants, poppies and the like.  In all cases it is simply a case of the company having a strict policy on uniform, not for any political motive but because they feel that unadorned uniforms are smarter.  In all cases when there has been a ‘fuss’, normally due to a junior manager applying rules a little too literally, the company has reviewed it policy.  There is no conspiracy here, none other than consumerism. 

Moving now to the misunderstanding of PC we can look directly at the use of language.  A popular one this year has been the ‘banning’ of the word Christmas.  As with so many horror stories relating to PC there is little basis in fact, as an educator I would be the first to know – we’re paid to be careful!  This story began with from two sources; first there are a few stores, mostly in the States, that have adopted this ‘happy holiday’ approach; secondly there are some councils who have flirted with the idea.  However it has never been the policy of government.  The shops, just as with uniforms, have simply adopted a policy that they feel will be best for sales, no message, no mission, just consumerism.  Normally trying to broaden the appeal and attract a wider range of customers.  The councils, though I can find only one example, rarely are doing anything other than trying, business like, to extend the season. 

Of course this relates to the use of the phrase ‘you are not allowed to say...’ and takes us back to education.  Did you know you are allowed to say anything, that there isn’t in fact one single word banned by English law?  Did you realise that the board in classrooms that is white is referred to a ‘white board’, an especially handy description when there is a blue notice board beside it.  In the canteen you can have a black coffee and the scraps are placed in a black, white or green sack.  The thing is that a great deal of sense exists within the public sector however there is also a degree of ‘well meaningness’.  When an employee reads a story in The Sun or The Mail they mistakenly try to apply it at work, without ever receiving instruction.  The only instruction we are given relates to discrimination and that is clearly defined in English law.    We can say any word in context.  As parents would expect we don’t swear – but I doubt that is seen as political correctness.  In addition we don’t call students fat, stupid or ugly.  We may refer to an act as stupid but not the student.  I am fairly sure this is what parents expect.  Likewise we don’t tolerate students using derogatory terms to each other. 

This moves us towards a more complex area.  Words change meaning with time.  Medical terms used to describe individuals slip into common use as a derogatory term.  In order to avoid the use of a derogatory term to describe an individual the medical profession adopts a new term.  In addition words have multiple meanings.  I describe my doctoral gowns as ‘gay’ relating to their colourfulness in the early twentieth century use of the word, however if you were to describe them as ‘gay’ with a sneer in your voice you would be using the term to describe homosexuals in a derogatory way and applying it to my outfit.  This use is unfortunately growing among young people it seems and is clearly offensive. 

Going back to the original observation, how have I managed to avoid falling foul of this culture of ‘political correctness gone mad’?  Simply I have never found it necessary to call anyone ‘names’.  Oh I can and do swear on occasions, though usually not at work, and when I do I may question your intelligence as part of that.  But I find language is rich enough without resorting to name calling, and at the end of the day that’s all it is.

 

In the run up to Remembrance Sunday a disturbing number of myths have been doing the rounds – all seemingly motivated by racist views.  A snap shot includes Poundland, Body Shop and Birmingham Council.   If you search Google for terms such as ‘poppies banned’, ‘staff banned from wearing poppies’ etc you find very little – yet these rumours circulate via social media.  It is true a member of staff at Poundland was asked to remove her poppy as it did not comply with the uniform; she then chose to leave work in protest.   She wasn’t sent home she left.  The manager was doing what mangers everywhere tend to do (and I advise them not to in my classes).  He was applying the company’s policy literally; it did not specify poppies just adornments to uniforms.  Of course the company now makes an exception for poppies.  Body Shop has never even come close to such a rule; people have confused it with the store Bodycare (a store I had never heard of).  Like Poundland Bodycare had a policy of no adornments, no charity badges or other such items.  In other words it has nothing to do with PC, with offending people or with appeasement – it does have a lot to do with Corporate Social Responsibility and employment rights – two things that seem to be eroded daily.  So the question is not why did the store ban poppies but why are staff restricted in what they wear and what employment law rights protect them.  This is a whole other debate.

As for the Council, well they have a policy of licensing charity collections and avoiding having too many on any one day – ask yourself whether you have ever been annoyed by charity collectors and you see the motivation.  As it turns out, and clearly an oversight by the Council, Shelter and The Anthony Nolan Trust (cancer charity) had already booked that week.  Both now have retracted their bookings to allow the RBL to collect instead.  Of course Shelter actually do a lot of positive work for ex-servicemen and woman as it happens, but of course can collect all year.   Not exactly a ban – more an oversight on licenses.

The whole debate got me thinking about war and casualties though.  I asked the question ‘what did the Second World War cost’ in terms of life.  The data is alarming (in descending order of total deaths):

Total

% of population

Soviet Union

23,400,000

13.88

China

10,000,000 to 20,000,000

1.93 to 3.86

Germany

6,630,000 to 8,680,000

Poland

5,620,000 to 5,820,000

16.1 to 16.7

Dutch East Indies

3,000,000 to 4,000,000

4.3 to 5.76

Japan

2,620,000 to 3,120,000

3.67 to 4.37

India (British)

1,587,000 to 2,587,000

0.42 to 0.68

Yugoslavia

1027000

6.67

French Indochina

1,000,000 to 1,500,000

4.07 to 6.1

Romania (within 1939 borders)

800,000

4.01

Hungary

580,000

6.35

France

567,600

1.35

 Philippines

557,000 to 1,057,000

3.48 to 6.6

 Italy

457,000

1.03

 United Kingdom

450,900

0.94

 United States

418,500

0.32

 Korea

378,000 to 483,000

1.6 to 2.06

 Lithuania (within 1939 borders)

350,000

14.33

 Czechoslovakia

325,000

2.12

Greece

320,000 to 805,100

4.44 to 11.15

 Netherlands

301,000

3.45

 Burma

272,000

1.69

 Latvia (within 1939 borders)

230,000

11.78

 Austria

120,000

 Malaya

100,000

2.28

 Ethiopia

100,000

0.6

I ended the table at 100,000 – the total loss is estimated between 62 and 78 million people.  In other words approximately the population of Britain today.  Some countries suffer greater civilian than military losses – mostly of course occupied ones like Poland.  Poland lost 240,000 (66,000 initially defending Poland then after its fall the rest fighting alongside allies – mostly Britain) fighting men and 5.5 million civilians.  At the time its population was 34 million so it lost almost 1% to fighting and 16% civilians.  The UK on the other hand lost 383,000 fighting men and 67,000 civilians (0.7% of population fighting).  The USSR’s losses were almost 50/50 fighting men and civilians.  India, one of many commonwealth countries that fought alongside Britain, lost between 1.5 and 3 million – mostly civilians.  Germany lost between 6.8 and 8.6 million people, again, mostly fighting men but also between 1 and 3 million civilians, its allies also suffered heavy losses.

I hope we remember all the losses this weekend, from this and the many other conflicts that have happened and are happening, and hope we start to learn that war is not the answer to our problems.

Financial Services Facts and Figures...............

We have heard an awful lot about markets and the finical sector, most recently catapulted back to the front page by the Euro bailout talks and the St Paul’s protest.   This week we saw concerns about FTSE pay rises in excess of 40% and the PM again defending the City of London financial district.  It seems timely to look at the facts and figures behind Financial Services.  Interestingly it is very hard to obtain figures on the value of this sector –perhaps why politicians feel so free to proclaim it as considerable.

If we look at GVA (basically the economic output of a country – about £1.35 trillion in the UK – I’m not going to go into the differences between gross value added and gross domestic product – these are just technicalities) we see that services account for 77% of this!  Clearly an important sector.  But what do we mean by services?  Well basically everything that isn’t the other 23% that is manufacturing and power and goods (manufacturing being 11.6%).  So retail, hotels, cafes, education, health, banks, etc.  What we are interested in is of course finance and banking.  The Telegraph recently quotes a figure of 14% - but it is not clear where this comes from. Business Services in its broadest sense the sector amounts to about 32% of GVA, but this includes everything from bookkeepers and banks to hedge funds and estate agents.  With the greatest respect I wouldn’t image the village bookkeeper considers themselves to be part of ‘City Finance’, nor has much by way of bail out been directed to them.   Looking at financial intermediaries and banking only the percentage comes down to 9%. 

So ‘The City’ amounts to about 9% of GVA (similar to the USA).  A significant amount undeniably.  What is worth considering is the amount this relies on retail banking and the amount that relies on loose regulation, after all this is where the debate lies.  Just as it is difficult to establish sales in the absence of advertising and marketing it is difficult to establish what would happen if the rules were tightened – in both case sales and banking/intermediary activity would continue.   In other words this 9% value includes all finical services and banking – so everything from my daughter’s savings account to the most exotic of hedge funds.   Clearly a significant proportion of this relates to retail banking and the more mundane stock market activity and traditional investment banking.

So, to put some £s to it, we can suggest that this sector contributes approximately 9% of the country’s £1.35 trillion GVA, or about £120 billion per year (this is not the same as asset base which is considerably higher at about 500% GDP).  That’s a considerable amount of course; after all it is 9% of all activity.  The question is though, leaving aside lost revenue linked to a slowdown in demand and recession, what is the cost of the UK bailout to date?  Estimates range from half a trillion to a trillion.  In other words between five and ten years worth of gross activity by that sector, and considerably longer when looked at in terms of tax receipts. Just as a comparison, and an industry I have no special links with, the creative arts industry employs “2 million people in Britain and contribute £60 billion to the economy each year, 7.3 percent of UK GDP” (there is a slight discrepancy between the value of these two industries due to data sources but the order of magnitude is clear enough) (Creative Britain).

With even such conservative papers as the Telegraph accept that this is a recession caused by the financial sector that sector’s activities and costs need to be considered carefully.  For example, it is estimated that about 600 of RBS’ staff were involved in high risk banking.  This is a very small percent of their then 130,000 total.    In other words we can estimate that of this 9% contribution to GVA a small fraction is linked to casino banking (for example in 2005 banking and financial intermediaries accounted for 5.4% of the EU GDP).  This then begs the question as to why we are so scared of regulating these type of activities to prevent reoccurrence.  Or if you prefer a free-market approach, why we are wary of allowing moral hazard to return and forcing banks to take downside risk.  Government money has been used to bail out so-called capitalist businesses instead of allow market forces to act and now we seem unable or unwilling to act to prevent a repeat of the crisis. 

We now seem to be in a situation where considerable effort and capital is deployed caring for a sector that represents at best a couple of percent of GDP (assuming that like every other country in the world we would have a banking and financial sector even if we ceased pandering to the casino side of this industry).  There are clearly two simple choices to be offered: regulation or separation of activities to allow for moral hazard.  After all what is capitalist in handouts or being too big to fail?  I am not sure what Giovanni Medici would make of this and certainly Schumpeter would wonder where the storm has gone.  

I have been enjoying the debates around Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and the rather enterprising global spins offs.  We have heard a fair bit about these so called anti-capitalists and we have ‘enjoyed’ three years of recession.  However I fear we have made little progress.  Watching BBC TV last night I was stirred into writing a short piece on solutions – safe in the knowledge it will be largely ignored.

What has begun to worry me is the misuse of the phrase capitalist.  There was a classic example of this on last night’s ‘Have I Got News For You’ – watch it here if you missed it.  One Louise Mensch MP – who also is keen on fox hunting and brought us the idea of shutting down Facebook and Twitter after the riots - is, it turns out, something to do with the Department of Culture Media and Sports.    The link to the economy is, for those that missed the show, centred on the protestors outside of St Pauls (London’s version of OWS).  Her message was simple.  These people want to end capitalism but they drink coffee in Starbucks therefore are hypocrites as they enjoy all of capitalisms’ gifts. 

Why does this concern me?  Well quite simply we seem to be mixing up what is happening in financial markets with capitalism.  This is not helped by the constant referral to these protestors as anti-capitalist.  They seem to me a rag tagged bunch of mostly well meaning people – I’m sure with a variety of views.   But I don’t represent them and am not here to defend them.  What concerns me is the loss of clarity in the debate.  Let’s jump straight to it.

Capitalism is simply the private ownership of the means of production with an interest in receiving a profit.   Starbucks does that well.  I’m sure the manufactures of the tents the protestors are sleeping in do that ok too.  I’m not so certain that is what is happening in the City’s financial districts though.  I want to look at three things in turn: equity; communities; debt.

The stock market (should) exist to match buyers and sellers.  Companies that need funds are matched with investors.  But is this happening?  It seems more and more that we are focusing on daily movements, on short-termism and on profit taking.  The plan is not to invest but to speculate, to gamble on short-term movements.  There is a really simple cost free solution to this.  Delay all trades by 24 hours, better still 7 days.  When a company does an initial public offering (IPO) it is not disadvantaged by that process taking weeks or even months so why should it be disadvantaged once it floats.  The liquidity of the investment market is not restricted by a gap between decision and action.  The speculators on the other hand are.   The property market already has long periods between decision and exchange and seems unaffected – really why do equity trades have to be instant?

Commodities are much more straightforward.  Again delay would help.  Overall though commodity prices are driven by demand for that good.  Speculators are having an impact but there seems some stability.  Delay here would also produce some stability as would regulation.

Debt is more slippery.  Investors have lent money to countries that may default.  This is the risk investors take – or is it?  It seems now that governments will go out of their way to bail out these miscalculations on the part of investors.  The investors got it wrong.  The government was not that safe a bet; the ratings agencies were not that reliable.   Now these investors are very well paid experts who got it wrong.  There should be a risk side to this risk/reward equation.  Of course governments tell us that if they default they risk higher interest rates – but what of this?  At the moment we are bankrupting ourselves to bail out the banks – what difference would the alternative of slightly higher rates of interest be instead of the expense of providing funds?  Why can’t we restore capitalism to these markets – why are they being subsidised?

So can we have business news back on TV instead of this constant reference to ‘markets’? Can we have a government that stands up and says we are a capitalist democracy and explains to banks that this includes them?  Can we see a government that focuses on growth in the real economy and forwards plans and initiatives to stimulate economic growth instead of making constant reference to the whims of speculators?  We can grow our way out of this – we can’t bet our way out.

Why we should worry about the future of HE...........

I am a very open individual, people are welcome, encouraged even, to wander in and out (only out if they are not ‘in’) of my classes and meetings.  I like managing and lecturing in the open as it were.  But I worry about the new league table approach to HE as exemplified by Which?   

You see it is fine to list results, number of firsts, 2:1s etc.  It is fine to list research ratings.  What worries me is composite rankings and student surveys.  The composite is disturbing as it is weighted and thus influenced by weights.  The student survey is a concern as it represents quantification of the qualitative. 

Let’s look at a few measures and skate around the problems.  Take class size.  What is a reasonable class size?  Are 5,000 fans disappointed at watching a concert live?  Are they cheated in so doing?  Once we move away from, say, one to six mentoring does it make much difference?  I find I can manage interaction up to and including about 70 in a lecture.  Beyond that it goes to pure lecture.  Two points though.  Is a pure lecture necessarily bad? And, and this is a warning, as 70 is the largest class they experience our students report that it is too large, one would expect the same would be true for 35 if that was mixed with 20s elsewhere.  Universities have very, very deep cuts to make here.  As soon as you begin that narrative you end with only sizes of ten or less being acceptable.     

Another interesting measure is support.  What support is required?  If we look to FE here we see nothing short of regular coaching on each assessment.  If you set a task, provide some lectures closely related, provide a guide as to expectations at the various academic levels and consider this education (which in fairness it is) expect criticism.  In a culture accustomed to not thinking anything short of paragraph by paragraph guidance is consider poor.

I didn’t used to like sprouts, I do now.  Likewise my tolerance, enjoyment even, of lectures has increased with age.  Be prepared for you best lecture to be considered dull unless it consists of videos, anecdotes, glib truisms and extreme brevity (avoiding theory and critique at all costs).  Then, when you deliver this brave new style of edutainment, be prepared for the lack of support claim detailed above.

We could go on, but what really worries me is inter-university comparison.  I will guarantee that graduates of Oxbridge and the like will praise their alma matters to the heavens.  Regardless of actual levels of support and interest no one wants to point out the Emperor is naked – especially after you have invested tens of thousands on the privilege.  They have a vested interest that their institutions stay on top.    

I suggest you go back to your staff rooms and prepare for the new term. Study PR, managing expectations, customer satisfaction, managing performance measures (not performance), and if you have time, your subject.

Social Enterprise................

I have been considering the growing phenomena of social enterprise recently.  There was a time things fitted neatly into private, public, charity, co-op and association/club but now we have, partly I thing due to the introduction of CIC, the addition of social enterprise.  Not a charity, not a democratic organisation and not a for profit business.  With this has come a flurry of modules, books, papers, conferences and consultants.  But I’m worried.

I’m worried because for one I think many who have travelled this route do not realise what they have done, they do not realise they are creating an enterprise they cannot sell, cannot cash in on retirement.  I think the general lack of trust in capitalism has seen this as a popular ‘alternative’ but I am concerned as to how alternative it actually is.

Let’s look at the differences (if any):  a private enterprise needs customers, finance, people management and operational skills.  Any profit made belongs to the owner and can be reinvested and capitalised or taken.  Either way there is an increase in personal wealth.  With a social enterprise there is a need for customers, finance, people management and operational skills.  Any profit made belongs to the enterprise and there is no increase in personal wealth except for salary.  Where I am stuck is that the first four are identical to private enterprise, customers, money, people, and organisation.  Skills and knowledge developed in private sector is immediately transferable.    The only difference is the founder has no increase in wealth linked to company success (beyond salary).  What then do the text books, papers, consultant etc teach that is not already in the public domain? 

What also do founders of social enterprise hope to achieve?  If it is access to public money and access to public contracts – restricted to social enterprises – then fair enough – eyes wide open and all that.  It is a way of leveraging money from the public purse – perhaps of offering better value for money than the public sector.  However if these individuals imagine that they are somehow opting out of the pressures of business, of the need to aggressively pursue opportunities, to mange staff effectively and to balance the books they are mistaken.  They are also mistaken if they think that their hard work and re-investment will result in ‘their’ company increasing their wealth.  

What’s wrong with education.........

As a few people are still speaking to me and using up my time I thought it might be an idea to aim at that most sacred of cows the system known as education.  From my previous blog on the use of ICT you will gather that I don’t necessarily follow fashion in these matters.

Is context helpful?  It usually is.  My experience spans higher education, further education and professional courses, with a little bit of training thrown in.  It crosses across numerous institutions.  Thus the context of this blog is aimed pretty much at all post sixteen education, though as I have a daughter at school I won’t let a lack of direct experience restrict me.  For structural purposes only I’ll start at youngest and lowest level and move forward.

I enjoyed my school days, mostly because no one seemed to push me.  I’m yet to determine if that was a good thing.  Now it seems that there is a constant barrage of tests.  That said there also seems to be a meandering curriculum.   I’m pretty much of the opinion that you need to read, write and count as a starting point and remain fairly shocked by some of what I see emerging at 16.   Teachers seem to work hard but I suspect they are overloaded with top-down initiatives.  Whether it be the Olympics or sustainability, enterprise or culture it seems that there is a reluctance to let teachers just teach the basics in a context that suits them and their students, allowing themes to emerge rather than be forced. 

This translates nicely into the post-sixteen sphere.  Here we are confronted with students who often have poor literacy skills.  Now you might say that literacy isn’t everything; that many have gotten by without it.  The problem is that we are now in the twenty first century where a failure to access and comprehend written material severely limits your engagement and understanding of society and politics.  In fact being able to access this is a basic human right.  So what is the national post 16 reaction to this?  Well it’s impossible to recap all that was missed and still achieve success so people tend to retreat to simpler forms of assessment.  Add in the silver bullet of ICT and we have the perfect answer.  Students can be set reports to write, given clear instructions and guided towards the answers on-line.  Call it all ‘research’ and it actually sounds like something cerebral is occurring – I prefer to call it a typing course.   So now we have a group of students emerging who find it difficult to conduct unguided independent study, who confuse research with following instructions and still have limited ability to construct a rational argument.

Enter the hallowed halls of higher education.  What now?  Well against budget cuts, higher fees, reluctant staff and students as described what can we do?  Traditionally theory was presented, discussed, assignment set and research conducted.  Why is that failing?  Well first presenting theory to individuals who have never had to think independently is destined to be a struggle.  The discussion will then of course also be limited, as will the understanding of an assignment that is not explained in such a detailed way as to leave little to the imagination and as for research, see previous points.  Our response?  Well distance learning jumps in here a little, or at least a hybrid version of it.  Place all the materials on-line so they can dip in and out when required.  Guide them tightly toward the right sources and set tasks based on them (ps – the best bit is it’s cheap).    And as for those that do turn up we have retreated to a version of education I last spotted in Beth’s kindergarten.  We lack inspirational lecturers capable of holding the interest of a class, a class who are less interested than ever.   In order to produce a method that management systems can measure we adopt strange hybrids of exercises, tasks and simulations.  We believe that this somehow links theory to practice, forgetting that no one has ever introduced the theory in anything but the most trivial of ways and that the simulation is as representative of reality as COD is of being on the front line in Afghanistan. 

Do I have solutions or is this just a random rant?  Well I do actually, nice simple ones.  At 16 plus we need to restrict the use of ICT to being one of unguided research only and only ever for a maximum of 25% of the day, preferably less.  As for HE we need to reassert the role of the lecturer, to celebrate it, to give it centre stage if you like.  To love theory and application and translate that love in our delivery.  To celebrate knowledge and understanding. To be passionate.

 

 The use of ICT in education..........

Turn away now as I am likely to cause great offence with this blog.  You see we have a lot of investment, financial and human, dedicated to the use of ICT (I’m using that broadly to cover anything electrical!) as both a saviour and a necessity of education and I’m about to try and drive a coach and horses through that.

To me, a simple economist, products and services really triumph when they fill a void.  Anything short of void filling and the best we get is a sort of branded or marketed swapping with minor benefits.  The telephone filled a void, there was no way to talk to someone at a distance, video phones don’t – I get no real added value from seeing someone’s face (beautiful though it may be).     This is the premise I am going to use to explore education.  I want to test whether emerging ICT fills voids or simply replaces. 

Let me begin with a win for ICT.  Text and e-mails provide a means of instantly delivering a message that does not have to be read immediately.  The closest we had to this was a letter but a letter cannot be sent cheaply.   Students had to leave a note, leave a message that someone wrote down or send a letter.  Basically there was no easy access to academic staff (or visa-versa).  The e-mail/text means that academics and students are contactable 24/7 even if they sometimes don’t answer.  The volume of communication has increased and, especially with the advent of smart phones, communication and tutorial style advice has grown to the benefit of both sides.   There would have been no way I could handle so many requests without this technology – my institution benefits from increased productivity and students gain greater access.

Compare this to PowerPoint and Prezi.   What benefit exists here?  I would argue that it is possible to out-deliver most academics using a chalk board, to deliver a more concise, informative and interactive lecture without the use of electronics than with.  The PP approach fills no void and instead consumes time in development that may be better spent on scholarly activity, providing, at best, a prop for the poor communicator and allowing the good to become lazy.  Of course I can embed video and the like – but have you ever watched the students instead of the video when it plays?  Watch next time and you will see they glaze over within a 30 seconds or so.  The screen is dull, lifeless and soulless.  They do not engage with video and simply let it wash over them – how else could they tolerate the drivel that masquerades as TV.

Taking it back out of the classroom what are we to make of the web?  In theory this is a replacement for the library (private or campus).   The web has enabled greater access to journals and ebooks, policy and practice and what, honestly, has this resulted in?  Instead of better referenced and deeper essays and reports we see instead a proliferation of plagiarism requiring us to be more and more vigilant.  This comes in a large part from a misunderstanding we have about education.  I know me, and probably you if you are still reading, have a love of learning and a love of knowledge but I am afraid that the majority of students want a degree and a better job.  Where we trip up is that when we talk as a community of practice we are amongst our own kind, people who love knowledge.  This is not a bad thing, a vet may go in to practice because of a love of animals, but he shouldn’t expect the animals to love that practice and its processes.  For them it’s a means to an end.  I love the web for the access it gives me to information and often read a wiki on the film I am watching whilst I am watching it – but we are a rare bread best directed towards accumulation and dissemination of knowledge – we are academics because we are obsessed with learning, our students are often students for a completely different reason.

This takes us on neatly to the next use of ICT.  Moodle, Pebble Pad, or whatever you call your virtual learning environment (VLE).  Students report greatest satisfaction with these when they reduce the students need to think independently or time plan.  When the system contains all the papers and links they need and reminds them of where they should be.  When it breaks the task down for them in such a way they do not need to plan.  What then has this replaced or what void has it filled?  Well I believe this is a replacement activity.  It replaces the students need to take responsibility.   There is a fine line here.  I certainly use electronic calendars and are able to do more as a result.  But that is the difference.  I do more not less as a result.  We have equipped students with access to resources on the web, access to VLE’s and have, often, at the same time reduced the size of tasks.  What we have not seen as a result is a deepening of learning.  Rather we have seen less engaged students as they drift instead towards leisure and PT work.

I can easily imagine a future where universities provide virtual courses for students.  Where students swipe information from one page to another with a stroke of the iPad, answering questions at the end of a ‘learning episode’ and accessing information whenever it is convenient instead of the discipline of lectures.  What I doubt is whether this will produce graduates with the kind of enquiring and challenging minds we need.  It will produce degrees though and, of course, that is what the customer often wants.

This blog was first published as a reply on www.ieeg.net 
More definitions?

We all know that academics are capable of dedicating huge effort to defining terms.  In fact at if we allowed them to police a riot I’m sure the first three days would be spent defining what exactly we mean by riot.  But I’m going to jump in here and argue that we don’t even have so much as a coarse filter in terms of enterprise – and that we at least need a colander.     

I have vague memories of the late 80s and during this time there was a big push in the UK towards self-employment.   I don’t think we emphasised the terms enterprise or entrepreneurship in the way we do now (though there was the Enterprise Allowance Scheme).  This move towards self-employment was designed to massage unemployment figures and to ease supply side constraints.  In fact we called it ‘self-unemployment’ and I was one.   In my industry we saw lots of staff shift from being ‘on the books’ to being subbies – sub-contractors.   This was not especially enterprising of them as it basically meant they did the same work, for the same construction firm, with a slightly higher hourly rate but no sick pay and no holidays.   I think that model is still with us and can be seen in the artisan and the consultant.  I think it explains a lot of the ‘jobbing’ style activity that sees people working for many firms.  I think it explains your plumber still.  I would call activity that involves very few or no employees and is reliant on selling a service or home produced product as self-employment.

Some of these self-employed have the capacity and drive to grow, to establish enterprises.  This growth is enterprising behaviour.  Closely aligned is a similar growth drive that relies less on the service or product based skills of the start-up individual.  Perhaps they take advantage of arbitrage and invest in physical stock in clever ways.    Perhaps they take the mass of hairdressers we seem to churn out and turn an old MacDs into an out of town drive through hairdressers (don’t try that – it’s an attempt at humour).  This potential spotting and risk taking behaviour is classic entrepreneur.

Finally we get the slow, careful and calculating business people.  The ones who benefit most from MBAs. The Warren Buffet and Alf Roberts (UK soap opera) style approach.  These often take established business and make them more efficient.    I sit here nowadays.

To me, what matters here is how this translates to education.  We have this last group well catered for, though the syllabus needs constant updating and tweaking.  The first group, the self-employed, need basic technical skills relating to tax and legal requirements of running a business.  The middle two are the two we need to push.  The growth individuals are the ones that we lack.  Of course it would be great if everyone could be in this band but they are not going to be.  What we need is to ensure that enterprise education is delivered by people who understand it’s about creativity and growth; not business plans; not tax; not legal entities.    People who realise it’s as much about the woman down the road who has grown to have six staff and a £1m turnover in two years as it is about an unrepeatable Branson or Jobs case study.  People who realise that a day spent with artists may be more beneficial than a day spent with an economist like me.  

 

Values and valuing.............

As an economist I am often asked to place a value on things.  I’m sure you are familiar with the adverts that claim ‘you’re worth it’ or that something is ‘priceless’ (though with an APR).  I’m also sure you’re aware of the transfer fees of soccer players (I’m aware they are high – that’s about it).  What do we mean by and how do we get to a money value?

I have had the pleasure of teaching environmental scientists economics and when I suggest valuing nature I generally got shrieks of derision.  I have worked with social scientists and had similar results.  On reflection it may just be me of course.  Let’s try a little thought experiment first though before I condemn myself.  If I was to suggest valuing a species of bug you may sensibly contend it is priceless.   Fair enough, you may find it hard to believe but I share that sentiment.  However sentiment is an emotional reflex and whilst I embrace emotions you shouldn’t build policy on them.   This idea of priceless implies without price and I assume by that it is not mean it has no value but that its value is infinite or very great.  But is it?  Would we use all of the Earth’s resources to save this bug, would we divert all our funding toward it?  Of course not and this is a silly suggestion on my part but it does prove a point.  We are looking for a value between zero and a number less than very big.  We’ll come back to this.

How about something more business orientated?  Brand value is a nice easy one (to measure – blooming hard to truly create).  Brand value is simply the value of a business less its breakup value and any royalties, patents etc.  In other words very similar to goodwill.  If you do some research on these terms you will see some scholars over complicate it (in my view) but basically if it is not adding value to the assets you own it is just a name (so be careful of these brand building offers – they’re probably just selling you a list of contacts to direct market to).  Jumping to company value we have simply share price times the number of shares for listed companies (and didn’t I laugh at the irony when the London Stock Exchange argued its shares were undervalued).  Otherwise, or if we adopt a sensible value based investing strategy with listed companies, we simply estimate and discount futures cashflows.  Not exactly rocket science.

What makes these two things easy is markets exist for their sale.  In the absence of markets we have to start estimating.  This is also quite straightforward, if somewhat approximate in outcome.  There are two basic methods.     First we can simply ask people and use this to build up a demand curve.  We call this contingent valuation (expressed preference).  Survey a collection of people asking them to estimate what they would be willing to pay to save our bug (or for that matter to prevent construction of a new road) and then extrapolate these costs to the relevant population.  Buggy is looking quite safe now – if on average people would pay just £1 as our little bug belongs to the world he gets to be worth about £7billion.  Likewise if on average we would pay £10 per year towards UK arts then the Arts Council ought to get about £630,000,000 - or £200,000,000 more than they get now.   The other method we called revealed preference.  This one we base on observing actions.  Two of the methods are travel cost and hedonic.  Travel cost can be expanded to include opportunity forgone.    Each year thousands of people travel to visit National Parks – add up all that cost.  Others live in or near them and forsake higher salaries to do so – add up all of that.  As you can guess the results can and will be significant.  Hedonic on the other hand is one of the easiest to understand.  A house in an estate in a suburb may be worth £150,000 and the same style of house not far away but near the coast £200,000 – clearly the coast adds £50,000 and of course there are many houses near the coast (for example).  So we have seen there are a few ways of valuing nature and the priceless that are quite straightforward, open to debate and actually show that these ‘priceless’ things are often grossly undervalued mainly because we avoid putting a cost to them .  Add to this the benefits to both physical and mental health, to culture and to country ‘brand value’ and you can see we have often been badly let down.

OK I have skirted around things here and left out some of the maths – let me know if you would like more details.  Is anything priceless?  Well yes it seems some things are.  The poets were correct to value love and friendship above all else, after all we have seen some amazing acts of selflessness in this area.  Diamonds may well last forever but they are mere trinkets and baubles next to people.