The crisis of teaching forward and the need for academic activism

Professor Richard Hall

@hallymk1 rhall1@dmu.ac.ukrichard-hall.org

HEA Social Sciences Annual Conference, 21-22 May 2014

What is the role of higher education, in a world that faces significant disruption from liquid fuel availability, climate change, and the secular crisis of capitalism?

The first crunch: liquid

fuel and economic

growth

USA Energy Information Administration, International Energy Outlook 2013. http://1.usa.gov/1i7iyWn

USA Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2009. http://bit.ly/1hSKa01

A severe energy crunch is inevitable without a massive expansion of production and refining capacity. While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the developing and developed worlds. Such an economic slowdown would exacerbate other unresolved tensions.

US Joint Forces Command. 2010. Joint Operating Environment. http://www.fas.org/man/eprint/joe2010.pdf

“I look at shale as more of a retirement party than a revolution” says [petroleum geologist] Art Berman... “It’s the last gasp.”

Global Sustainability’s [David] Hughes estimates the U.S. needs to drill 6,000 new wells per year at a cost of $35 billion to maintain current production. His research also shows that the newest wells aren’t as productive as those drilled in the first years of the boom, a sign that oil companies have already tapped the best spots, making it that much harder to keep breaking records. Hughes has predicted that production will peak in 2017 and fall to 2012 levels within two years.

“The hype about U.S. energy independence and ‘Saudi America’ is deafening if you look at the mainstream media,” Hughes says. “We need to have a much more in-depth and intelligent discussion about this.”

Loder, A. 2013. U.S. Shale-Oil Boom May Not Last as Fracking Wells Lack Staying Power. Bloomberg Business Week. http://buswk.co/QxGGdm

USA Energy Information Administration, What Drives Crude Oil Prices. http://1.usa.gov/1lxBgvC

our prediction of small further increases in world oil production comes at the expense of a near doubling, permanently, of real oil prices over the coming decade. This is uncharted territory for the world economy, which has never experienced such prices for more than a few months…

we suspect that there must be a pain barrier, a level of oil prices above which the effects on GDP becomes nonlinear, convex. We also suspect that the assumption that technology is independent of the availability of fossil fuels may be inappropriate, so that a lack of availability of oil may have aspects of a negative technology shock.

In that case the macroeconomic effects of binding resource constraints could be much larger, more persistent, and they would extend well beyond the oil sector.

IMF Working Paper WP/12/109. 2012. The Future of Oil: Geology versus Technology. http://bit.ly/Qy4EoO

The second crunch: climate

change and economic growth

James Hansen et al 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 011006 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/011006

IPCC. 2014. Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. http://1.usa.gov/1hR6qr1

in the most developed and the emerging economies unsustainable consumption must be urgently reduced. This will entail scaling back or radical transformation of damaging material consumption and emissions and the adoption of sustainable technologies.

At present, consumption is closely linked to economic models based on growth. Decoupling economic activity from material and environmental throughputs is needed urgently.

Changes to the current socio-economic model and institutions are needed to allow both people and the planet to flourish by collaboration as well as competition during this and subsequent centuries. This requires farsighted political leadership concentrating on long term goals.

Royal Society. 2012. People and Planet. http://bit.ly/IF77EJ

The third crunch: the secular crisis

of capitalism

http://bit.ly/owE2zW

Zerohedge. 2014. Student Loans Hit Record $1.08 Trillion. http://bit.ly/1i7Kklu

TUC. 2009: http://bit.ly/iivVTO

Zerohedge. 2014. Europe’s Peak Youth Unemployment. http://bit.ly/1hTwba3

Debt is a way of life.

"Anyone put off... university by fear of... debt doesn’t deserve to be at university in the first place“.

Michael Gove, quoted at Next Left: http://bit.ly/foMuBQ

“student debt, in its prevalence and amounts, constitutes a pedagogy, unlike the humanistic lesson that the university traditionally proclaims, of privatization and the market.”

Jeffrey J. Williams. 2011. “Tactics against Debt”: http://bit.ly/fQvP8N

Education markets are one facet of the neoliberal strategy to manage the structural crisis of capitalism by opening the public sector to capital accumulation. The roughly $2.5 trillion global market in education is a rich new arena for capital investment.

(Lipman, P. 2009: http://bit.ly/qDl6sV)

$4.4tn, 2012 Global Education Expenditure ($91bn in e-learning is the fastest growing).

(IBIS Capital. 2013: http://bit.ly/16aJi1Q)

If we presume that a connection exists between the increase in debt on one side and the increase in “asset value” on the other, then I would say chances are we’re looking at both a gigantic wealth transfer from the poor towards the rich and a huge bubble that allows that to happen, and that will make the poor even poorer when it bursts. Which seems inevitable, because debt by itself cannot create value.

And if I’m right, what we’re seeing is not the incredible resiliency of the markets, and no real increase in asset value, but an increase in the threat to the social cohesion of our communities, cities and nations.

Ilargi. 2013. How do we define value? The Automatic Earth. http://bit.ly/1pyfUgN

There is a strong correlation between energy use and GDP.

Global energy demand is on the rise yet oil supply is forecast to decline in the next few years.

There is no precedent for oil discoveries to make up for the shortfall, nor is there a precedent for efficiencies to relieve demand on this scale.

Public sector debt is a burden that ultimately requires economic growth to pay it off. Energy supply looks likely to constrain growth.

Global emissions currently exceed the IPCC 'marker' scenario range.

The Climate Change Act 2008 has made the -80%/2050 target law, yet this requires a national mobilisation akin to war-time.

Probably impossible but could radically change the direction of HE in terms of skills required and spending available.

more efficiently unsustainable.

24

Volatility and precarity:what is to be done?

cybernetics is ‘not just a technological history but a history of the changing social networks that connected these technologies to the function of the state and its management’ (p. 17)

'[technologies] helped solidify a particular articulation of the state that was supported by new claims to legitimate power' (p. 96)

Miller Medina, J.E. (2005), The State Machine : politics, ideology, and computation in Chile, 1964-1973. MIT Ph.D. Thesis. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/39176

Allende:

We set out courageously to build our own [cybernetic] system in our own spirit. What you will hear about today is revolutionary - not simply because this is the first time it has been done anywhere in the world. It is revolutionary because we are making a deliberate effort to hand to the people the power that science commands, in a form in which the people can themselves use it.

Miller Medina, J.E. (2005), The State Machine : politics, ideology, and computation in Chile, 1964-1973. MIT Ph.D. Thesis, p. 252.

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/39176

Collective work is one of the cements of autonomy, whose fruits usually spill into hospitals, clinics, primary and secondary education, in strengthening the municipalities and the good government juntas. Not much that has been constructed would be possible without the collective work, of men, women, boys, girls and the elderly.

Zibechi, R. 2013. Autonomous Zapatista Education: The Little Schools of Below. http://bit.ly/19XfrAF

Good Living

The five revolutions: democratic; ethical; economic; social; Latin American dignity

To build a fraternal and co-operative coexistence.

The transformation of higher education and the transfer of knowledge in science, technology and innovation.

The Republic of Ecuador. National Development Plan: National Plan for Good Living 2009-2013: Building a Plurinational and Intercultural State.

http://bit.ly/GQJi0M

Education is crucial to reinforce and diversify individual and social capabilities and potentialities, and to foster participative and critical citizens.

Education remains one of the best ways of consolidating a democratic society that contributes to the eradication of economic, political, social and cultural inequalities.

From a strategic perspective, it is essential to develop various forms of knowledge with high added value, as well as technical and technological research and innovation.

The combination of ancestral forms of knowledge with state-of-the-art technology can reverse the current development model and contribute to the transition towards a model of accumulation based on bio-knowledge.

The Republic of Ecuador. National Development Plan: National Plan for Good Living 2009-2013: Building a Plurinational and Intercultural State. http://bit.ly/GQJi0M

IPCC. 2014. Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. http://1.usa.gov/1hR6qr1

Adaptationplace and context specific

complementary actions across levels, from individuals to governments reducing vulnerability and exposure to present climate

variabilitycontingent on societal values, objectives, and risk perceptions. Recognition of diverse interests, circumstances, social-cultural

contexts, and expectationssensitive to context and the diversity of decision types, decision

processes, and constituencieseconomic instruments can foster adaptation by providing incentives

but

constraints can interact to impede adaptationshort-termism or failing to anticipate consequences can result in

maladaptationlimited evidence indicates a gap between global adaptation needs

and fundsco-benefits, synergies, and tradeoffs exist between mitigation and

adaptation

“only in association with others has each individual the means of cultivating his talents in all directions. Only in a community therefore is personal freedom possible... In a genuine community individuals gain their freedom in and through their association”

Bottomore, T.B., and M. Rubel, M. 1974. Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy. London: Penguin.

In the face of the triple crunch, of the volatility imposed by the interrelationships between peak oil, our climate realities, and economic futures, is business as usual really possible for those who labour and study in higher education?

What kinds of conversations are we having with society about our need for “more sophisticated financial engineering” to underpin increasing student debt?

What kinds of conversations should we be having with young people and their parents about the volatile relationships between debt, real wages, unemployment and precarity, in the face of the added volatility of access to the resources that keep the economy growing?

Co-operative higher education for mass

intellectuality

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