The Business University. From Warwick 1970 to QMUL 2023
Aditya Chakrabortty has written an important piece for the Guardian about the hard line tactics of management at QMUL, Mile End during the recent dispute with the UCU
As with most University bosses nowadays the VC takes home a salary of hundreds of thousands of pounds but was happy to leave lecturers in penury for much of 2023.
It reflects that latest stage of the Business University- a degree factory, where profit rather than learning is the bottom line.
I exist only on the margins of academia as the long time convenor of the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London School of Advanced Study. Despite the fact that the Government goes on constantly about history, there isn’t much profit to be made out of studying it. The IHR in this context does a great job as the centre of UK research history.
As a socialist historian the QMUL story reminds of a long back history. It goes back to Warwick University in the late 1960s. At that point the late socialist historian E P Thompson held a senior post there (not as a Professor- he hated them). When students discovered the links between the University and the local motor industry- which was really running the place- he collaborated with students to publish Warwick University Ltd. It was an expose of the Business University at its beginning and its only gone downhill, learning, research and study wise, since.
As 2024 will be a General Election year it leaves the question of whether a future Labour Government might promote the labour’s movement’s long association with the quest for learning and knowledge. After all Keir Starmer has recently been making much of his time at Leeds University.
I think perhaps the organised strength of the UCU provides a better hope for the future.
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