Formerly self-empowered as a practitioner of knowledge and an authority in the discipline and in the running of the university, the practising academic has been relegated to the role of mere functionary in a system whose core principles are essentially uncollegial.
What previously constituted the academic’s identity was a different form of organisation that was compatible with the culture of learning. This was collegiality, a phenomenon like fellowship that is difficult to define, even elusive and arcane.
The Oxford English Dictionary provides functional definitions only: “1. Colleagueship; the relation between colleagues. 2. The principle of having a ‘collegium'”. A “collegium” in turn is defined as “colleagueship, partnership, hence a body of colleagues, a fraternity”. The absence of further definition implies that collegiality is characterised by an intuitive, institutional understanding transmitted over time.
The definition appears to incorporate two key ideas: that first, collegiality is a relational phenomenon, and second, it is a corporate concept, but fundamentally at odds with the business model that systematically applies its monolithic apparatus across the board and from above. In the sense of relation, collegiality is understood by definition to embrace the presence of the other, whether it be individuals or the group. It has no meaning or significance for the individual alone. In the sense of the “corporate”, it affirms organised co-operation and mutuality of interest.
Collegiality derives from ancient college structures, each of which was marked by its own distinctive character, style, forms of association and specialist areas of study, and each functioning as an independent body within the federal framework of the university as a whole, rearticulated in the division of the modern university into colleges or faculties.
By its very nature, idiosyncratic, collegiality is bonded to the composite structure of a discrete institution: its every manifestation reflects the nexus of arrangements and conditions that have evolved over time. It registers the historical imagination that progressively binds past attainments to ongoing endeavours and prospects. It derives its strength from the seamless integration of collegial forms and their application in all the areas that advance its ideals.
Far from being an adjunct to the academic project — a chivalrous embellishment amid work — collegiality is, primarily, a mode of governance. Whatever decisions are taken result from sustained conceptualisation, reflection and dialogue, which ideally allow everyone to participate, such that the collective voice that prevails is his or hers as well.
This does not mean that everyone agrees to everything. On the contrary, disagreement is an important aspect of dialogue. The process is inclusive and respectful of each contribution, and therefore what is arrived at is communal, not individualistic, factional or hegemonic.
As with any association based on mutual agreement and trust, it is by no means foolproof or without flaw, misuse or discord (sometimes exceedingly fractious). Privileges of one kind or another have undoubtedly interfered with its practice over the centuries, but it must be understood that collegiality is simply a normative form of reciprocity that some fail to live up to. It is essentially always in an imaginary, potential state, never practised to the letter, since there is no rule or regulation or even set code that prescribes its conduct (though statutes might embody or enjoin it).
This is its special attraction. Like writing itself, it is reinvented every time it is “performed”, is a praxis rather than an ideal. Being pliable, it accommodates itself to the eccentricities of the academic mind, as well as to goals aiming to redress the inequities of the past. Governance of this order is nuanced and is a tribute to the common-spiritedness that informs collegial procedures. While it takes time for voices to be aired and agreement reached, the system works in that it allows every institutional level to make its appropriate input on academic principles.
Arising from governance are qualities that enhance aspects of academic community, strengthening the ties that foster creative cohesion among colleagues.
Collective consciousness arouses an exceptional sensitivity to matters of mutual concern.
It brings to the fore the importance of engaging not as individuals whose career path is the definitive feature of their “corporate” existence, but rather as integral contributors to the discipline.
In this context, togetherness and interdependence have a specific currency, for they are conditions for the sustainability of scholarly endeavour: they inspire and drive forward in concerted effort what isolated individuals cannot by themselves achieve.
They offset the one-way traffic of the linear teleological design, so favoured in the present commerce-driven dispensation. Instead, they embrace a confluence of activities that transcend the divisions placing lecturers and students, professors and junior lecturers, mentors and mentored, in opposite camps.
Interaction takes the form of a sharing of interests and a nurturing of potential that enriches both parties, making the transmission of knowledge a two-way exchange. Similarly, contributors to a publication, conference or project will be guided by the editor or convener, irrespective of rank or reputation.
This anomalous displacement of hierarchy characterises collegial relations, in the recognition that, in the republic of letters, knowledge strictly belongs to no one, is freely accessible to all, and can be supervised by anyone who has the requisite academic apprenticeship, for whose cultivation the university provides a proper training and accreditation, guiding the “bachelor” to the position of “master craftsman”. Given its foundation in self-governance and community, it may be inferred that the collegial arrangement instinctively resists the imposition of an oligarchy, which, in its incorporation of top-down structures “for profit”, is an affront to the principles of autonomy and reciprocity.
The dispute regarding the corporatisation of the university centres on the erosion of a sense of vocation, without which collegiality is impotent to advance learning and the academic community, thus yielding to self-interest or the market. The corporate seeks, and even by way of advertisement solicits, customers and competitive advantage and is indifferent to loyalty, seniority or long service (concerns of the past). It takes for granted that lecturers and students (as employees and clients) will shift allegiance to the option that sells best (has the most attractive brand label).
Vocation, by contrast, is in its original meaning a “calling”, an intimate responsiveness to the intrinsic value of an art, trade or profession (in the sense of occupation one professes to be skilled in), and a commitment to its wellbeing. It expresses a belief in the institution and its distinctive nature. Integrity — the coherence of collegial relations — is at stake, calling for dedication to a discipline that, presently, is diverse and permeable, intersecting with others of its kind in new configurations and to the free pursuit of knowledge, held “sacred” within the protective ambit of the university.
Waning concern for the institution of learning as a “sanctum” indicates in itself that the discipline is no longer of central importance, that the ethos that defined it is wanting, erased by the segmentation of courses and proliferation of options, following the supermarket principle of a basket of eye-catching offerings, to cater for ever-increasing numbers of students.
Evidently, the university has lost its mission as the testing ground of knowledge, historically pursued in specialised areas of study. Academics are opting out of their calling and, as if cynical of any restitution of the collegial impulse which once vitalised the work ethic, are content to abandon their creativity, to carry on regardless and without due recognition for their efforts, resigned to await the next salary payment (the slightly improved remuneration being effectively a corporate trade-off).
The situation in the humanities is probably more dire than it is in the sciences, because the former — once the bedrock of the university — has less credibility than the latter in an age of high-tech and “knowledge production” and is therefore more easily undermined. Moreover, science speaks to the corporate, providing, in reduced form, the principles of accounting that derive from the laboratory: efficiency, predictability, calculability and control.
Reliant on theory, abstraction, logic, insight, intuition — in brief, on the classical virtues of conceptual inquiry and imaginative (or aesthetic) representation — the humanities resist “results” and “solutions” that readily lend themselves to commodification.
Furthermore, it is being denigrated because its persistent recurrence to culture independently of the marketplace is a direct rebuke of the corporate mentality, which measures knowledge in cost units (as, for example, reflected in enrolments and pass rates that determine the viability of smaller, endangered disciplines).
Increasingly, the humanities are placed under severe pressure, bereft of vocation and a collective ethos that served in times past as an anchor. Its decline is that of collegiality itself, a community in which, sui generis, scholars are respected and affirmed, in recognition of the belief that the academic pursuit — collectively testing the boundaries of knowledge — must be valued primarily for its own sake, whatever may be its “usefulness” or its potential impact on society.
Professor Alan Weinberg and Dr Greg Graham-Smith are lecturers in the English department at Unisa. This is a condensed version of part two of an article intended for international publication next year. Part one (condensed version) appeared in Getting Ahead on September 24; and part three will be published in the November 26 edition of Getting Ahead.