Learn to Consume, Teach to Account? Anwar Tlili and Susan Wright Abstract: The UK government’s 2004 law, aiming to make universities con- tribute to Britain’s success in the global knowledge economy, creates an explicit market in higher education. Students are presumed to occupy the sta- tus of consumer in an economic transaction with universities. The law gives students a right to information and an audit function so that their choices as ‘intelligent consumers’ will ‘drive change’ in universities. Interviews in two contrasting universities explore students’ responses to this discourse and reveal their different aspirations and concepts of education. Yet they share doubts that regimes of audit and notions of accountability to consumers will not make their voices really ‘count’. The dominant subject position offered to an increasingly diverse provision’ (DfES students by the UK government’s White 2003: para. 4.2). Through exercising Paper, The Future of Higher Education (DfES choice, students are to be the drivers of 2003), is that of consumer. Indeed the doc- change in higher education. This article ument seems to take it for granted that will first analyse policy documents in students already occupy the status of con- order to ask where this discourse about sumers. The government first introduced students as consumers has come from, and a formal economic transaction between how it fits in with the Blair government’s students and universities in 1997 when image of ‘modern Britain’. Second, it will they made students pay £1,125 towards draw on empirical research to ask how their university fees each year. The 2003 students at different kinds of universities White Paper and the 2004 Higher Educa- respond to this discourse.1 tion Act not only raise student fees but, more importantly, they introduce an explicit market in higher education for the Global Knowledge Economy first time. In 2006, universities are to pitch their fees for each course at between £0 Tony Blair’s 1997 election mantra ‘Educa- and £3,000 per annum according to how tion, education, education’ was a sign that they competitively rank themselves a thesis advanced by Robert Reich (1991), against similar courses, and how gradu- an academic who became US Secretary of ates from that course prosper in the Labor during President Clinton’s first employment market. The Act aims to term, was now influencing the British make universities more responsive to their Labour Party. Reich argues that the future market and accountable to their cus- lies in what others have called ‘the global tomers. It establishes students’ rights to knowledge economy’. His argument is information, their consumer rights, so that that, because of international competition, they can ‘become intelligent customers of US corporations have shifted from high- Anthropology in Action, Volume 12, Issue 1 (2005): 64-77 © Berghahn Books and the Association for Anthropology in Action Learn to Consume, Teach to Account? | AiA volume production to making bespoke, dependent on the fate of flagship giant high-value products for individual cus- corporations. No longer is each national tomers. As witnessed by IBM’s recent sale economy in a separate boat competing in a of its home-computer manufacturing to a worldwide regatta (ibid: 5). The role of Chinese firm, producing computer hard- governments is no longer to control a ware in the US no longer has sufficient national economy. Instead, Reich suggests, value added; profits lie in designing soft- governments should act to increase the ware to meet a particular user’s needs. proportion of the population with tertiary This market requires corporations to be education who have the skills of abstrac- agile, to switch direction to seize new tion, system thinking, experimentation opportunities. Corporations cannot oper- and collaboration required of symbolic ate with vast resources, armies of disci- analysts (ibid: 229). This will ensure the plined workers and predictable routines. country can maintain its prosperity by Instead they need the flexibility of a small attracting a good share of the global, high- core and a network of short-term alliances income work. Then, he suggests, the gap with smaller businesses, subcontracts and between those involved in the global econ- joint ventures—partners who will share omy and those left behind should be risks and returns. bridged by the ‘quaint’ idea of progressive This network is global and, as described taxation (ibid: 245-247). Governments by Reich, it is peopled by horizontally should use taxation to invest in the educa- organised creative teams of symbolic ana- tion of the ‘left behind’ in order continual- lysts. Some team members develop new ly to increase the proportion of the nation- ideas and technologies while others iden- al population who can become symbolic tify problems in customers’ operating sys- analysts and sell their services worldwide. tems to which these solutions can be applied. In all, they manipulate symbols— British Government’s Version of the Global data, words, oral and visual representa- Knowledge Economy tions—using analytic tools to simplify reality into abstract images that can be The globalisation argument is an impor- ‘rearranged, juggled, experimented with, tant aspect of the discourse New Labour communicated to other specialists, and uses to legitimise and depoliticise its poli- then, eventually, transformed back into cy options and its politics, especially when reality’ (1991: 177, 178). Forming 20 per- cuts in public spending are at stake. The cent of US jobs in 1990 and rising (ibid: global knowledge economy argument 179), these are the people who can com- dovetails with New Labour’s pattern of pete in a global labour market. legitimising neoliberal policies by attribut- Reich identifies a danger that these indi- ing their necessity to the irreversible viduals and corporations, forming what demands and the pace of the global econ- he calls a ‘global web’, threaten the very omy that Britain has to keep up with. No foundations of national economies and wonder Reich’s argument was attractive polities. Globally oriented symbolic ana- to New Labour ministers. Echoing Reich, lysts are tempted to slip the bonds of David Blunkett as Secretary of State for national allegiance and leave the less for- Education and Employment said, in Feb- tunate behind, threatening the social cohe- ruary 2000, sion of nations. The economic well-being of a nation’s citizens is no longer shared, The powerhouses of the new global economy are innovation and ideas, creativity, skills and tied to a nation’s economic power, and knowledge. These are now the tools for suc- 65 AiA | Anwar Tlili and Susan Wright cess and prosperity as much as natural The pace of both social and technological resources and physical labour power were in change means that (…) [t]his is truly an era of the past century. (Quoted in Wolf 2002: xi) lifelong learning. Today’s generation of stu- dents will need to return to learning—full- Charles Leadbetter, one-time policy advis- time or part-time—on more than one occasion er to Tony Blair and major author of the across their lifetime in order to refresh their knowledge, upgrade their skills and sustain Department of Trade and Industry’s 1998 their employability. Such independent learn- White Paper ‘Building the Knowledge ers investing in the continuous improvement Driven Economy’, expands on the idea of their skills will underpin innovation and and the imagery: enterprise in the economy and society (DfES 2003: para. 1.24). The generation, application and exploitation of knowledge is [sic] driving modern econom- The citizen, as lifelong learner, has to con- ic growth. Most of us make our money from tinually ‘invest’ in their learning, paying thin air: we produce nothing that can be for their tuition fees as a start, in order to weighed, touched or easily measured. Our ‘sustain their employability’ and survive output is not stockpiled at harbours, stored in warehouses or shipped in railway cars … That in an ever more ‘flexible’, more insecure should allow our economies, in principle at labour market. least, to … be organised around people and The British version of Reich’s thesis has the knowledge capital they produce. Our chil- developed a slightly different description dren will not have to toil in dark factories, descend into pits or suffocate in mills, to hew of the skills workers need in the new raw materials and turn them into manufac- knowledge economy. The labour force is to tured products. They will make their livings be flexible, that is, workers engage in through their creativity, ingenuity and imagi- short-term projects without job security nation (quoted in Wolf 2002: xii). and have to be able to keep switching The 2003 White Paper proceeds from this career track. Knowledge workers are vision: adaptable, they are both team players and able to work alone as self-starters. They Society is changing. Our economy is becom- should have ‘learned to learn’. This means ing ever more knowledge-based—we are that developments are happening so fast increasingly making our living through sell- ing high-value services, rather than physical that, according to government documents, goods. These trends demand a more highly- subject knowledge quickly becomes out- skilled workforce. (DfES 2003: para. 5.1) dated and irrelevant, and workers need to know how to find new knowledge. They The chattering classes who promote this are responsibilised: they know it is their ‘thin air’ thesis will presumably continue responsibility continually to update their to wear clothes and shoes, eat food and knowledge and skills throughout their life use other ‘physical goods’ produced and to invest in their own learning to stay through the toil of invisibilised workers in the labour market. Finally, they are exploited in other parts of the world. They incentivised through debt.