Barker, D --- "Privatising the Public University" [2012] LegEdDig 15; (2012) 20(1) Legal Education Digest 53

• BOOK REVIEW
• Privatising the Public University

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BOOK REVIEW
Privatising the Public University

Margaret Thornton

Routledge, A GlassHouse Book, 2012, 270pp.

Everyone would agree, including I am sure the author, that this book is greatly enhanced by the thought provoking foreword provided by Professor Michael Coper, Dean of the ANU College of Law where Professor Margaret Thornton is based. In his foreword Michael Coper reflects on Margaret Thornton’s lament for the loss of the idea of legal education as a public good, and focuses on the need for addressing of the endemic structural issues which she has identified in her book.

It is not just the foreword that needs to be studied prior to the reading of the main text. In her six page preface Thornton sets the scene by expressing her concern at the corporatisation of Australian Universities and in particular their law schools. This concern is also extended towards the loss of the age of law as an intellectually robust university discipline which has been diluted due to the effect of the market on legal education. The preface contains evidence of an extremely well conducted project of empirical based research incorporating the interviewing of 145 legal academics in 40 law schools across Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Canada. In this respect the author, whilst exercising caution at the danger of ‘[e]xtrapolating from the experience of academics in one country to those of another’, does believe that: ’Law schools have been caught up in the homogenising practices of corporatisation and globalisation for some time.’ Stressed in the preface is the role of the neoliberal law school and those norms which exist as part of a common academic legal culture, and it is this overview which is carried forward into the main text of the book.

Although this text follows the common themes as disclosed in the preface, the author has structured these in such a way that the reader can follow them in a logical sequence. Again it will add to an understanding of the text if one reads the first part of the Appendix under the heading ‘Approach’ at pages 230–233 as this sets out the method adopted towards the research underpinning the main body of the book. Thornton emphasises that she adopted a qualitative approach towards her interviews as she was of the view that: ‘Qualitative research is more than a research method; it is also an epistemology, or a way of knowing in which it is recognised that academics are active participants in the construction of their world and the interpretation of it.’

In Chapter 1, Thornton develops her thesis under the title – The political economy of higher education to state that radical changes in higher education took a marked shift to the right, and this was during the latter part of the 20^th century reflected globally. This chapter involves a review of the effect of the new knowledge economy whereby knowledge has become a trading commodity. In this chapter the view is expressed that the Dawkins Reforms introduced in 1988 not only brought an end to the binary system but also brought about the end of Newman’s idea of the university, with it being replaced by the university as a corporate structure having the profit motive as its objective. Such a structure also involves the introduction of risk and the advent of government agencies to ensure the monitoring of performance of academic institutions, the counter-effect of audits and the introduction of league tables attempting to measure and compare the performance of education institutions.

It is against this background that in Chapter 2, The market comes to the law school, the author describes how law schools have become the new purveyors of ‘knowledge capitalism’, at the same time being recognised as one of the main income-producing areas for a university. Despite their fund raising capacity Thornton rightly points out that neither the universities or the legal profession were interested in supporting the law schools in the provision of enhanced facilities such as libraries, or the improvement in the student/teacher ratio. This chapter also embraces a comparative study of how this is just not an Australian phenomenon but can also be illustrated by case studies in Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The chapter also considers the question of the new status of law students having become customers, although even full-time students are having to devote a considerable part of their time to working long hours to support their studies. This also means that their choice of legal career is narrowed owing to the need to settle the debts they have incurred whilst studying, in effect limiting their choice of employment in the corporate sector rather than in the lower paid social justice area.

Jettisoning the critical, Chapter 3, would be fascinating reading for any law academic, even more so for the legal historian, as it traces the metamorphosis of legal education from the early apprenticeship model of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, through to the phase of liberal legal education in the 1970s and 1980s which ‘acknowledged the legitimacy of social justice and law reform’ and then reverting to the more ‘technocratic and applied focus’ of the current law school. The examination of these developments is supported by the outcomes of a large number of interviews and discussions particularly concerned with what may be regarded as the vocationalising of the curriculum. This is an ongoing dispute between those who view a law degree as the provision of a liberal arts education as compared to those who favour an applied approach involving the introduction of competency standards and the teaching of skills.

In Chapter 4, Governance and academic life highlights how the introduction of managerialism has created additional problems for those involved in the administration of any form of leadership in law schools or even those in the lower lecturing grades just involved in teaching and research. This means that as universities indulge in top-down managerialism on all academic levels in the law school are impacted with demands for increased appraisal of staff performance and the measurement of outputs relating to an individual’s teaching, research and publications. Whilst it is not disputed that some supervision is necessary, it is argued that the ‘hard-managerialism’ focus on these issues has led to an increasing ‘corrosion of collegiality’ within the academic law community. This has meant increasing competition between legal academics to retain their status whilst at the same time becoming involved in problems of casualisation, workloads as well as promotion preparation all causing diversions away from achieving a balanced life as a law academic.

Research in the corporatised university, Chapter 5, will resonate with all involved in the life of the law school especially as an academic. In the opening pages of this chapter entitled Contested knowledge there is an illuminating discussion of the development of legal research in the modern age. However what this chapter really illustrates is how neoliberalism has transformed the character of research from a contribution to scholarship to a value for end users. It also emphasises the importance of the concept of ‘publish or perish’ so that research performance is not just measured by an output of publishing textbooks, journal articles etc, but the need to publish in an international refereed journal. This approach coupled with the necessity for income producing applied research, has brought a new meaning to legal research particularly as all these efforts need to be audited to reflect the outputs of both the law academic and the law school. The chapter also touches on the problems which can arise should there be de-linking between teaching and research for the law teacher.

In the final Chapter 6, Conclusion, Thornton emphasises that she has endeavoured to illustrate how corporatisation has brought about a cultural shift in what is meant by the understanding of the traditional idea of the university. The factors by which she illustrates how this change developed and what it now means will impact on all concerned in legal education. This may be summed up by her statement that: ‘In this study, I have sought to show how the market has impoverished the law curriculum, commodified research, transformed students into customers, reduced academics to auditable performers and generally encouraged a lowest common denominator approach.’ However despite the depressive effect on academic morale of these outcomes, Thornton notes the optimism of legal academics and their ongoing aspirations and urges her readers ‘not to give up, to cling valiantly to the idea of a university legal education as a public good and to stand up and demand answers.’

This is an extremely well researched book which rightly questions the current state of legal education. It contains a challenging message for all legal educators and should be on everyone’s required reading list.

Emeritus Professor David Barker AM

Editor