Conformity Versus Freedom at University

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Summary

In this Opinion piece, Berlins criticises moves in the recent past by University administrators to impose stringent codes of conduct on students.

To the author, this is objectionable on the grounds that such a regimen infringes on the freedom of young adults and that there is much to learn outside the classroom that is invaluable later in life.

Analysis

The author objects to the newly authoritarian contracts of behaviour that administrators foist on students because they are restrictive of personal growth and prevent the student from exploring many other intellectual avenues.

It seems faintly ridiculous, in the opinion of Berlins, to “turn back the clock” and cast the emergent young adult back to the rigid discipline of school and family. Why he asks, cannot the youth be set free to stretch their wings and explore the many joys of college life away from the disapproving glare of tutors and parents?

Should not college be a foretaste of adult pleasures? Are not the sheltered groves of academe a safe venue to explore dating, sex, drugs and alcohol?

Berlin eschews efforts of university authorities to enforce a regimented lifestyle on students: arrive at class on time and ‘study diligently or else face expulsion. The author is convinced that this is wrong. Tutors should live up to their social contract to show up on time, teach reasonably well, mark essays and examinations in a timely fashion. But students should not have to live up to the minimum requirement to attend arrive on time or even attend class belatedly if they had hung one on the evening before. If in so doing, they fall into the many traps for pleasure before studies are strewn along their path, surely making mistakes is part of growing up?

This is where the logic of Berlin’s argument starts to unravel. For the sake of legitimacy, he must admit on one hand that university is necessary in order to learn something useful and earn a degree.

On the other hand, he insists on the right of young adults to roam free and unfettered, seeking learning outside the classroom and library as the untutored whim strikes.

Berlins continually harps on the theme that his (comparative) success after university is the best proof that being less than conscientious about higher-education learning works! He claims he managed to eventually pass his exams despite missing lectures wholesale and swotting frantically near the end of the term. To be involved in such non-class activities as Orientation Week, food co-operatives, student-run peer counseling, and referral centres, band and DJ competitions, organising marches for political causes and the environment are to paradoxically raise one’s qualification for employment on graduation. And of course, student dilettantes such as Berlin obviously took the view that swapping small talk and possibly uninformed opinion in bars and coffee shops broadens the mind better than philosophy, literature, economics, or the great scientific discoveries that marked the progress of mankind.

Implications

One rather suspects that this opinion columnist had tongue firmly in cheek while composing this diatribe against the newly-stifling atmosphere within many a campus. He offers the reader the lame excuse of second-rate tutors and unexciting libraries as hardly motivating or worth the time to attend. Unhappily, the broadening of intellectual horizons is too subtle to be noticed until one receives full marks at the term’s end. On the other hand, fun and games are instantly reinforcing and the memories last a lifetime.

Secondly, it is fallacious of Berlins to argue that university is the only chance students have to learn how the “real world” operates, to interact with a variety of people, and thence, develop social skills. This is a myopic viewpoint because juveniles start being gregarious, peer-influenced, and conformity-driven back in O and GCSE levels.

By university, certainly, most have gained a measure of self-confidence. But the point is that academic demands exist side by side with sport, clubs, and student festivals. Hence, the assumption of the author that conscientious and accomplished students graduate as social cripples must be called into question.

Far from being just a disciplinary measure, Newman (2007) reports that nine universities already had formal contracts spelling out the terms of the relationship between school and student and 17 more were in the process of adopting one. The motivation seemed to be self-defence, a pulling away from the prevailing rationale of students as paying customers with full consumer rights (including the by no means negligible right to sue for ‘failure of service’).

Berlins pursues his farcical piece to its ultimate conclusion by arguing, “where is the harm” if a student misses too many lectures, does poorly at examinations, and earns the ultimate sanction of a failing mark?

It does tutors and students a disservice both to insist that university is all about the experience of failure.

One would think it is the sharpening of one’s intellect and the recognition of high marks that is more edifying for every student, average or brilliant.

Conclusion

In the end, the point of this satire of Berlin’s may well be that universities have been driven to such a faintly ridiculous extreme by declining trends in student performance and academic standards. At the University of Nottingham, Browne, Gregory Phillips and Unwin (2004) found to their dismay that student ability to handle maths had declined significantly, continued to do so, and affected performance in Chemistry, Maths, and Electrical & Electronic Engineering courses all the way to graduation. And at Luton University, in an experience typical of new universities perennially strapped for funding, staff from the vice-chancellor down confront the painful paradox of wishing to maintain academic standards while funding councils reduce their commitment because student retention steadily worsens (Baty, 2004). A university, in short, stakes both its standing in HEI rankings and budget on ensuring that students do well, at least enough to stay on the rolls.

Bibliography

  1. Baty, P. (2004) Caught in vicious cycle of declining standards. Luton University.
  2. Berlins, M. (2006) . The Guardian. Web.
  3. Browne, W. Gregory, D., Phillips, A. & Unwin, M. (2004) Declining mathematical standards among Science and Engineering undergraduates: Fact or fallacy? Nottingham University.
  4. Newman, M. (2007) . Web.
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