Culture?

So it has been a month since I last posted anything here. A lot has happened.

There was this interesting piece in The Cambridge Student where a member of the drinking society goes to a 'fresher swap' and explains how selection for the swap works:

"During the lull in proceedings just before the curry arrived, they began to press me for answers as to their selection, and encouraged by their responses to some of my anecdotes, along with the effects of several pints, I leant forwards and confided (with a knowing smile and a wink) that they had in fact been picked straight from the fresher's facebook group, by virtue of their aesthetic qualities and whether or not they looked "fun" (translate: easy).
...
Cambridge gets away with a lot under the pretence of tradition, and perhaps we could all do without this bizarre and laughable need of some people to set themselves apart as the social elite within an already elite university."

This is an interesting comment on student culture in higher education institutions. What do we really mean when we talk about student culture? Is this the kind of thing we are referring to? Is student culture for the most part just free sausages, beer, chlamydia share-parties with the occasional theatre production (complete with almost nude actresses) to give it that icing of dignity?

In other news, the York University Student Union is to lobby for a 24-hour library. This is the kind of thing that would probably only work at a residential university. Can you imagine a student taking the 1030 train on to campus to hang out in the library until at least 6 am before they can return home?

Marc Bousquet also writes some excellent commentary about the higher education quality cult and the problem of what seems to be the US-equivalent of a hyper-casualised academic workforce.

The second article is particularly relevant to the University of Melbourne. The university is happy to cut permanent staff and rehire them as casuals, essentially forcing people off real contracts and on to dodgy ones. It undermines their rights as workers and tells them how much the university really cares about the teaching and research they do (not a lot). The student unions and associations are more or less powerless to stop the trend since the university will just claim that it is an HR issue and refuse to talk any further. Bousquet argues that it is only when the untenurable reach positions of leadership that the situation will change. It is only through autonomous action that the casual staff of UniMelb can win decent conditions. They soon will be, if they aren't already, in the majority. All they need to do is realise it.

It is a little depressing really. How on earth do these people expect students to get a reasonable education and to engage with the campus if the only staff we encounter are casuals or sessionals? Casual staff means casual engagement and it is rather hypocritical of the educationalists and executives to casualise their academic workforce on the one hand and then whinge about the casualisation of student engagement.