The transparent academy

antique shop

Germaine Greer wrote a provocative piece in today’s Guardian about the real student experience of university (against the background of the Oxford move to institute student contracts). Her basic line is that students go away to university and learn to be independent and incidentally, along the way, they learn from each other. Of course, an increasing number of students are now local – they don’t actually leave home at all, let alone become independent – but, this aside, let’s hope they learn from each other because we’re so busy filling in forms and monitoring our quality that students hardly get a look in. So I laughed out loud reading about drKate’s Transparency Review – I note there isn’t a category for filling in your review (or doing mindless monitoring tasks). In fact, I made a vow to myself a couple of years back that I would always lie when filling mine in, based on a principled rejection of the phoney notions of transparency that are at the heart of this!

…and so back to the meme thing (far more interesting, I think than transparency). Well here goes: 4 things.

1. 4 things isn’t really a meme at all.

2. 4 things is a meme, but where’s it going?

3. 4 things has too much in common with the Transparency Review.

4. Guy is far too boring to engage with 4 things (and will probably loose good friends by speaking his mind).