Talking to a university

If you need a league table to tell you what matters, are you really a university?

I like very much these words, a tweet by Steven Curry. I like also that he addresses the university directly, as "you". Will it understand him?

Those excellent words come from the reality perceived by humans. They start from the human conception of "university". Individual humans who work in a university will understand them. But the university, although composed of humans, is not a human; as an anthill is not the same as an ant. To say to it, "you don't need league tables" would be like telling us we don't need light. It needs to understand the landscape within which it is fed, and where it competes with its fellows for resources. There is no point in talking to it about "civilisation", "humanism", "social justice"... None of these will help it maximise the flow of resources. They are as useful to it as astrology or demonology.

The university needs academics so it values them to some degree but they tend to remain tied to the human reality they have learnt from their parents, teachers, books, institutions, alliances. They are a mixed blessing. Among its constituent humans it values most those who align themselves most completely with its reality, who will not ask, "does the performance indicator really represent what it's meant to?", only "how do we maximise our score for this performance indicator?". The possibility of the university, navigating its landscape via a conceptual representation, is realised in their minds.

Professor Curry's words will be understood by these people. They'll listen politely, say something bland like, "yes, of course" and go straight back to devising strategies for maximising performance indicators, NSS score, league table position, income... - to the numbers that define the reality of the university.

Business leaders

We have a duty to teach the next generation of business leaders about inclusivity, sustainability and corporate responsibility, say Erika H. James and Ilian Mihov.

Who could argue with these words, byline on an article in yesterday's Times Higher? The authors, Deans of two University business schools, make a case that business can play a leading role in fighting climate change, inequality - the biggest challenges facing humanity - and that business school academics in turn should be carrying out the research that will inform and educate them as they do this. They note that, according to at least one recent survey, 'the public continued to place greater trust in businesses than any other institutions – just ahead of NGOs, and some distance ahead in the trust stakes than governments or the media' and highlight 'the increasing reach of many multinational organisations, whose recognition of their growing responsibilities has led them to be identified as a force for good'.

My goodness. What a hopeless exercise. Could we educate lions to be vegetarian?

Future business leaders may indeed leave business school educated in ethics, sustainability, inclusivity and I'm sure they do already. Many will be capable of A-grade essays on these topics, as needed for the good degrees that will enable the first steps of their careers. But a corporation exists to maximise profit, not to behave ethically or sustainably or to make a better world for humans. If our aspiring business leader lets any such considerations get in the way of profit he will suffer by comparison with his peers and his career will falter (please let me say 'him' for brevity, by the way, I don't mean to exclude women). If he's in a leadership role his company will be disadvantaged in the marketplace by actions other companies don't bother with. Corporations are blind to such considerations until they become visceral - impact profits in other words. He succeeds by aligning himself with the reality perceived by the corporation. He resembles a person in a colonised country who has accommodated himself to the invaders' world view. In this case corporations have colonised humanity.

There are so many, well-documented examples of, literally inhuman behaviour by corporations. The oil companies' decades-long campaign against environmental activism, pursued in spite of their own clear understanding of climate change, gives an example on a spectacular scale but there are stories of destruction, pathology any day we care to look for them. Today we might look sideways at the English water companies or the multinationals engaged in salmon farming in Scotland.

Joel Bakan's book, The Corporation draws together many more examples as well as spelling out the legal and regulatory background to corporate pathological behaviour. He quotes businessman Robert Monks: 'The corporation is an externalizing machine, in the same way that a shark is a killing machine... There isn't any question of malevolence or of will; the enterprise has within it, and the shark has within it, those characteristics that enable it to do that for which it was designed.' A corporation 'tends to be more profitable to the extent it can make other people pay the bills for its impact on society' - for the economist the word 'externalities' sums this idea up. We've rendered the planet uninhabitable but you'll pay.

The evidence for corporations as inhumane, destructive, externalizing machines seems overwhelming, unarguable. I think it's rather sweet, touchingly naive even, to find successful academics ready to set it aside and place their faith in business as a force for good. I'm sure they can indeed 'teach the next generation of business leaders about inclusivity, sustainability and corporate responsibility' and equally sure that these lessons will be set aside as soon as the logic of the corporate landscape starts to set in. Perhaps many of these new business leaders, afraid of freedom, will even welcome a situation in which they can surrender themselves to something bigger. They'll still be kind neighbours after all. Only if education has gone far beyond 'teaching' to consider the nurturing of the complete person, to produce people of personal integrity, clear in who they are and unafraid to spurn the accommodation with something nonhuman, could we have any hope of success.