While the term, knowledge, and its commonly perceived notion has remained somewhat invariant historically over centuries, it was only in the post-war decades that the newly dominant section of the economics profession, which began running increasingly after analytical elegance and logical precision, dared to posit ‘knowledge’ merely as a set of information, eventually blurring the ageold distinction between their notions.
This, in turn, led to a spree of diluting and codifying knowledge in all branches to express it in the shape of a set of information. This process has, of course, been greatly facilitated at all levels of education by market-oriented innovations in word-processing software governed by digits and algorithms. Indeed, it is now a common practice for software engineers, like medical representatives, to come and tell school/college/university teachers how best or effectively the latter can teach a course in classrooms with the help of newly innovated software geared to populist digital and visual presentations of knowledge. Consequently, educationists/educators/teachers are all effectively becoming ‘learners’ to these software and electronic gadgets engineers!
And this is how knowledge has taken the overwhelming form of mere information or ‘know-how’ and an ‘age of information’ soon got to be elevated to a ‘knowledge society’. This has had dilutionary ramifications for the notion and purpose of education, university, research and indeed entire academe. In its wake a scholar or scientist who was traditionally considered to be distinguished in a society has become increasingly unexceptional or a commoner especially if she could not amass huge wealth either by selling patents or by commissioning highly remunerative innovative research from the market or industry.
Equality of right to vote for political parties in a democracy is now getting steadily extended into citizens’ equality of right to a university degree. This trend is widely being hailed on two commonly revered counts. First, this reflects a growing stronghold of the cherished idea of ‘democratic equality’. Second, this helps greatly to strengthen macroeconomic health of a country by boosting private investment in educational enterprises and capitalistic growth. But its potentially adverse qualitative ramifications for the standard of academic research are certainly wary, uncertain or perhaps even distortionary.
Thanks both to the currently dominant notion of knowledge as information and to the prevalent view of research mostly as innovation (vis-à-vis invention or creation of new knowledge), doing research in universities has been made intellectually less challenging, exacting, or demanding.
No wonder, this dilutionary refashioning of classical/traditional notions of research and knowledge paves the way for a quantitative expansion of researchers in universities, who are not academically motivated and whose overriding purpose is to not to contribute to the stock of academic knowledge, but only to secure a doctoral degree/credential. This, in turn, provides a vibrant market for a burgeoning corporate/private business in higher education that caters mostly to degree-hungry unacademically motivated researchers of lesser or mediocre intellectual abilities.
Ironically, this expansion of educational enrolment through academic dilution in higher education is hailed by a large chunk of the population as a victory or progress of democratic ethos in the polity and is thus capitalized and campaigned by those who come to power through people’s votes.
However, it would be utterly unreasonable to think that this dilutionary economistic reimaging of academia would not have significant dilutionary ‘demonstration’ ~ if not demoralising ~ effects on those who ~ irrespective of class, caste and race – possess superior intellectual minds and academic capabilities.
As the students of lesser or average mental or intellectual ability and endowment constitute the majority, it is very likely that the standard of curriculum at college/university levels would be relatively lower if a constraint ~ implicit or explicit ~ of a large (minimum) number of enrolled students exists either for the sake of economic viability of a private university or for the stability and popularity of a ruling government (political party) which funds the public university.
It is no less likely that a lower standard of curriculum required by the above logic would have adverse effects or hindrances on university’s universal educational mission of cultivating superior intellectual minds, abilities and creativity, apart from the possibility of the latter being forced by the lower standard of curriculum and teaching to adapt themselves downward and coming closer to the level of their common peers.
On the other hand, if the standard of curriculum is kept reasonably high consistent with the mission of cultivating and breeding superior academic minds, there is a good chance that students of lower abilities would work very hard to better themselves significantly though not exactly to the level of their superior counterparts.
In any case, it is almost certain that the currently cherished mission of massification or universalisation of higher education cannot but have perceptibly harmful effects on the educational mission of cultivating and nurturing cohorts with innately talented and intellectually superior minds who would be truly capable and volitionally motivated to undertake basic, fundamental or original research projects.
In the face of these two conflicting missions of university/ higher education ~ expansion of enrolment and participation and cultivation of the best academic and creative minds and original research ~ the entire world seems to have shown a greater sympathy with the former over several preceding decades, thereby gradually imperilling a steady or sufficient flow of superior minds, merit and abilities who can do original and basic academic research whose standard intellectually as well as academically is above mere innovations or re-make or fusions in various academic and creative fields.
Indeed, there is an emerging body of evidence already of a growing (relative) dearth of able researchers who are genuinely motivated to make original academic contributions ~ a job which calls for much greater patience, perseverance, depth of scholarship, cognitive understanding and critical as well as analytical thinking abilities. This, in turn, has contributed to a relative sluggishness in the pace of growth of basic/original (academic) knowledge relative to the expansion of innovations, re-making, re-creating or re-cycling, resulting in a distinct imbalance between innovative and basic/ original research. But this sort of disproportion is hardly viable for too long, since the former is crucially dependent on the latter.
The pace of innovations (e.g. patents) made out of a single fundamental invention or discovery is bound to run out of steam sooner or later. New basic inventions or additions to fundamental knowledge at a stable pace are required to sustain a steady flow of innovations.
Evidence is piling up suggesting that current cohorts of researchers engaged in innovations are already facing substantial difficulty in finding ‘ideas’ for its further growth, as the advancement of basic/original research has already been sluggish because of both longshrinking public funds on it as well as growing scarcity of capable researchers who are motivated or willing to undertake original/basic research. Indeed, there is mounting evidence suggesting that ‘productivity of research’ (i.e. number of research outcomes/ patents per unit of research inputs e.g. number of researchers, amount of funds) has been declining particularly in the sphere of science and technology over a few preceding decades.
Particularly in social science disciplines, a large chunk of what is officially being rolled out as academic research from universities is truly little if at all more than what we earlier called ‘market research’ undertaken by business houses for launching a product. A trace of basic understanding about the true notion of an academic research which is supposed to contribute either by adding to or revising or refining the existing stock of academic or original knowledge is found missing in much of contemporary research.
This academic decline and intellectual wilting seem to be globally pervasive and have occurred across the board in the entire higher education world including bestknown, so-called world-class, top-ranking academic organisations and universities.
This global intellectual retrogression has its origin ~ both arguably and evidently ~ in the ideational, ideological, perceptual ‘rampages’ perpetrated by the neoliberal reign in higher education spanning over several preceding decades since WWII, especially with regard to the long-lasting notions of education, research, academy, knowledge, higher education, university and other related aspects. Therefore, it is highly imperative to resurrect and implement these traditional academic notions and ideas if civilisational progression is to be kept alive .
(The writer is Rajiv Gandhi Chair Professor, Central University of Allahabad, and can be reached at arupmaha@yahoo.com)