Some people have asked why my blog is not a
blog about Higher Education, even though I seem like I'm the sort of person who
would blog about Higher Education. Some people are pretty stupid. All the same,
and for the satisfaction of those people, here is a blog about why my blog is
not a blog about Higher Education. It isn’t entitled 'A Blog About Why This
Blog Is Not A Blog About Higher Education, To Those People Who Have Asked Why
This Blog Is Not A Blog About Higher Education, Which, By The Way, Is Just A
Really Dumb Question'. But it ought to be titled that. I genuinely hope you
don't enjoy it.
Let us start with a proposition. What if this
blog entry, instead of being a blog entry about why this blog is not a blog
about Higher Education, were instead a blog entry all about Higher Education? Doesn't
that sound exciting? I mean, of course it does. If there's one thing I know,
it's what the audience likes. And what the audience would like, if you ask me (and
yes, I know you didn't really do that), is a lengthy diatribe on the state of
learning at universities today. Doesn't that sound great? Doesn't that sound
like something you'd love to take time out of your day or night to read, even
though there are lots of places where you could already drown yourself in
reading about that several times over, and even though drowning yourself is probably
precisely what you'd want to do after reading even one of those things?
Maybe you're one of those people who already
do stuff with or in Higher Education. Or maybe you're one of those frankly much
better and more worthwhile people who don't at all do stuff with or in Higher Education,
and just came here because you searched for Thundercats, or Transformers or
something. Well that's good, because on balance stuff about 'Thundercats, or
Transformers or something' is precisely what this blog has semi-consistently
delivered for nearly a decade, and is quite likely to continue semi-consistently
delivering in the future. Indeed, if you can just hold on for the next couple
of paragraphs, I think you might find yourself with a pleasant surprise. Of
course, you probably won't be able to hang on for the next couple of
paragraphs, on account of not having grasped those critical transferable skills
that Higher Education can absolutely probably not provide. If that's the case
I'd say that, on the whole, your life is a better and less neo-liberal one, except
in so far as the term 'neo-liberal' doesn't really mean anything and is
therefore not properly susceptible to quantifying determiners.
So, having listened with some diligence to
what the people wanted, it became clear that what the people would quite like
is a great and long and also great piece on Higher Education. But which of the
many highly interesting things about Higher Education would the people like to
read about, I wonder? Would you like some statistics on student engagement?
Some notes on research trends? Perhaps some pie-charts on the funding
situation, or maybe an in-depth review of whatever colour paper our delightful
government currently crayolas its strategy onto? Maybe you'd like some careful
thoughts on pedagogy, which is an educational term for when teachers pretend like
there's a scientific basis for listening to people say stuff and then
understanding it.
Or would you like, perhaps, to know things
about that one thing I like to write about academically? Maybe you'd like to
come to An Event, where I'll talk about that one thing I like to write about
academically rather than actually writing about it, and we'll all have wine
afterwards and say how jolly interesting it all was while quietly checking our latest
apple watches and then realising that because they're apple watches we can't
actually check the time on them, only email (or progress in games or to track
our footsteps or to pay for things in a manner that's somewhat less convenient
than normal).
Anyway, guess what? There are, like, loads of
people who like blogging about Higher Education. And there are even people who
like to blog on those blogs about their own blogs that are also blogs about
Higher Education. Wow! So if you'd like to read about those things, and you
like to constantly email me to let me know you'd like to read about those
things, maybe you'd instead like to just cut out the middle-man and go to one
of those places instead? Even better, I'll save you the trouble by summing up
every blog that has been or has ever been written on Higher Education ever.
Actually, not just every blog, or even every worthless report, but also every
piece of teaching and research under the wonderful sun and, really, why not
just go to the beach instead of doing any of this already?
Alright, fine. Here is the first thing you
need to know about blogging about Higher Education. Firstly, you should refer
to it as HE. This is not an acronym, but rather an indication that it's mainly
run by men who think they’re God.
Haha. Did you like that joke that's also not
really a joke at all? Every so often I like to throw in an easy one for you. Here
are some more: did you hear the one about the pirate who went to the apple
store? He was looking for an ipatch. Did you hear the one about the pirate who
went to the university? He got made director of a research council so he
wouldn't be around any of the students he'd abused. Did you hear the one about
the sequence of jokes that showed how easy it was to transition between an apple
store and a university? It's the latest education strategy document for your
institution.
Here is the second thing you need to know
about blogging about Higher Education. It is vitally important that you have an
opinion, and, if at all possible, that opinion should be the diametric opposite
of someone more famous than you. You may wish to blog that fact. Ideally, you
will want to wait to blog that fact until the more famous person has Done
Something Outrageous. Doing Something Outrageous, of course, is a broader
phenomenon where people on social media realise that they would very much like
to be paid as much as the person who has Done Something Outrageous. Sometimes,
it is when people on social media feel that they have a genuine ideological or
moral difference with the person who has Done Something Outrageous, and also feel
that the appropriate method of articulating this feeling is, without any doubt,
a string of incomprehensible smileys. Or whatever we have to call smileys these
days. As we all know, challenging someone who has Done Something Outrageous and
is more famous than you in your academic field will, if handled correctly and
creatively, very soon propel you to the point of being an Outrageous person
yourself. Well done!
Here is the third thing you need to know
about blogging about Higher Education. Nobody cares. Seriously, the blob-eating
gameplay of Agar.io represents a more intellectually rigorous seminar plan than
the one you just wrote, and that's okay. It's probably even laudable.
Here is the fourth thing you need to know
about Higher Education. People in Higher Education often like to say that there
is no such thing as a stupid question. Those people are stupid. They also like
to write blogs about Higher Education. If that sounds like something that might
grab you, why not go and read one and also never come back here? Thanks!
Notes:
No really, thanks for stopping by. Next week's blog: Lion-O Rearticulates the Departmental Vision
Strategy.