Thinking in Stupid Institutions

1. Thinking in Stupid Institutions Keith Hoskin The Business School University of Warwick 30 November, 2010

2. Thinking in Dumb Uor “Il y a toujours un peu de pensée même dans les institutions les plus sottes” • Michel Foucault on the possibility (& difficulty) of thinking “Thought exists well beyond the systems and edifices of discourse. It is something that is often hidden but always animates ordinary human action. There is always some pinch of thought even in the stupidest of institutions. There is always some thought in the most silent of habits.” M. Foucault, Dits et Écrits, vol. IV, p180 (Paris, 1994)

3. Some woodland paths to thoughtful thinking for action • Where do you/we find your/ourselves? • Inside the Business University • From 19th century Chicago to Warwick University Ltd & now • Who are you/we inside Business U? • A Dumbed, Confused and Multiple Self? • As Customer, ‘Ability-Machine’, Self-Entrepreneur, Product • Acting ‘smart’ in a world of dumbed/numbed selves • Which targets to engage, and how?

4. Inside the Business University? – 1 • Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America (1918) • The Higher Learning presumably an ‘Esoteric Knowledge’ • Pursuing profit and loss in thinking and insight through.. • ‘Idle Curiosity’ plus ‘the Instinct of Workmanship’ • But now (i.e. from 1890s) pursued under business-ruled Governing Boards by policy-focussed academic businessmen • Doing things ‘practical…for private gain’ • Final Chapter: ‘Summary and Trial Balance’ • Profit and loss in thinking is now only expressible via ‘a system of scholastic accountancy’ • A ‘necessity evident to men whose ideal of efficiency is the system of control exercised through a system of accountancy in the modern large business concerns’ • So learning becomes ‘a merchantable commodity…rated, bought and sold by standard units, measured, counted and reduced to staple equivalence by impersonal, mechanical tests’…

5. How come the Business University? • Initially as ‘Return on Investment’/‘Mode of Salvation’ for first US ‘Robber Barons’ • Ezra Cornell (partner of Morse in first virtual-monopoly Telegraph business) founds Cornell (1865) • Leland Stanford (partner in Central Pacific RR & Wells Fargo) founds Stanford in 1885 • John D Rockefeller (founder of Standard Oil/Exxon) founds Chicago (1891) • 1st President, William Rainey Harper – allegedly the only man who ever got Rockefeller to write a blank check

6. Inside the Business University? – 2 • Veblen’s Career as Object of his thinking? • 1892-1906: Rockefeller’s University of Chicago • forced to resign for mix of radical views & lifestyle • 1906-1909: Stanford’s University (same outcome) • Warwick University Ltd (1965-79) • First V-C, Jack Butterworth (Oxford academic) • First to follow the Higher Learning in America template • Imposing business as well as scholastic accountancy • Find your Benefactor (Heiress to Hueblein/Seagram fortune) • Sweat the assets (1st V-C to get students to ‘vacate’ rooms in ‘vacations’ to maximise conference revenues) • NB: Bursar of New College, Oxford before appointment • Today – Change? Or intensification?

7. Who are ‘you’ inside the Business U? • The Customer (what the BU tries to tell you) • Satisfaction proved via scholastic accountancy of questionnaire scores • The ‘Abilities-Machine’ (Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 2008: 229) • ‘which will produce and be remunerated by income’ given ‘good’ grades from a ‘good’ school certified by scholastic accountancy • The Self-Entrepreneur (Foucault, Birth of Biopolitics, 227) • The self as human capital funded ‘enterprise’ in a translation / insertion of the neo-liberal vision of a marketised world to within the self

8. So 3 selves plus 1 more • ‘The Product’ (building from Chomsky’s insight about the Press) • A Newspaper’s major product is its readers not its contents, since • Its major revenues come from Advertisers seeking to buy access to specific readerships • So BU’s major product is its students (esp 3-year-cash-flow undergrads) • YOU are the best living proof to both potential funders and potential research-producers of BU’s value • So BU generates its big returns with you as ‘bait’

9. Acting ‘smart’ in a world of dumbed / numbed selves Your immediate adversaries were yesterday’s “you” • Cameron (Oxford), Clegg (Cambridge), “Osbo” (Oxford), Blair (Oxford), Brown (Edinburgh), plus • Obama (Harvard Law), Dubya (Yale), Clinton (Oxford & Yale Law), Bush Sr (Yale) • All buy and sell the first 3 images of you • Clegg today? • The poor as ‘abilities-machines’ who will do their “self-as-enterprise” cost-benefits calculus “wrong” thanks to you lot

10. Beyond your immediate adversaries? • Understanding the Business U / Business / Neoliberal vision-myth of the state interplays • Cuts are ‘inevitable’ through applying one version of ‘business accounting reason’ to state resources • And fees have to go up (while cutting state money to BU) to make you better self-entrepreneurs • While retaining, for the BU market, optimal customer satisfaction across the “abilities-machine” population

11. All of which means…? • Cherish ‘thinking’ • Even within the stupid institution • Perhaps understanding why such smart people can act so dumb • While seeking your ways to turn their dumbness against them • For instance, what is the greatest disaster to hit Warwick this year? • Our position in the World’s Top 200 Universities • Given the V-C’s Strategic Scholastic Accountancy Goal • “To be in the World’s Top 50 by 2015”