Graham Crowley (AM315) is right to criticise the deep penetration of management culture into art schools, but his analysis of the problems within art education is partial and misleading. Referring to such managers Crowley observes that they act upon their 'facile understanding of art ... [rendering] infantile our discourse, our practice and our culture.' Presumably this 'our' pertains to lecturers, but exactly the same criticisms could be applied to many art school tutors too, not to mention some of the students. Perhaps this is partly because managers frequently appoint to teaching posts candidates who will sufficiently de-individualise themselves so as to fit neatly into whatever scheme the management concocts. Such collaborators - people who get jobs for the wrong reasons - may include the manager's wife, husband, son, daughter, cousin, pal from school, daughter's boyfriend - or maybe just someone they have previously worked with and who they know will do what they're told.
Another version of such nepotism takes the form of employing former students whilst excluding far more highly qualified applicants who have, however, no previous connection with the college in question.
Claiming it is just management that is the problem is akin to suggesting that the over-commercialisation of the artworld is entirely the fault of dealers and collectors. If artists refused to pander to 'the market', a much more interesting and intriguing artworld might result. In the art schools managers only get away with instigating the ruination Crowley describes because some of the staff are happy to do their bidding. There is no unity among teaching staff, just as there is none among artists, since the predominant model of behaviour within both spheres is dog eat dog.
I know of lecturers who are against corruption and incompetence, and who do the best they can within very difficult circumstances. Crowley implicitly supports such people but going on about 'choice' and how certain colleges still do a 'magnificent job' (whether this claim is accurate or not) does nothing to elucidate the symbiotic relationship between management and those who support it. It isn't just the University of the Arts that reeks of over-commercialisation; the whole education system has become obsessed with financial success, marketing and administration.
One important consequence of putting profit before the maintaining of educational standards is the latter's decline and devaluation. The latest line to be sold is the practice-based PhD, an oxymoron if ever there was one. Candidates for this qualification are encouraged to believe that having a PhD will help them develop and improve their practice, career and general social standing; meanwhile, many who have signed up for such PhDs speak openly about how they don't believe the institutional propaganda but they can get access to libraries and equipment by doing one, so why not? They appear oblivious to the fact that institutions, by definition, impose upon their inmates restrictive forms of behaviour, language and thought. PhDs in fine art bureaucratise art, compelling the candidate to compress the productive contradictions of their practice into the straitjacket of a dry-as-dust academic discourse. Rather than being an expansive and enlightening experience they can result in disappointment, self-deception and long-term debt.
Crowley makes passing mention of the Research Assessment Exercise and its frittering away of scarce resources. But so much money is already wasted in art schools that this aspect of the RAE is hardly news. Putting your mates and money-spinning colleagues into books and exhibitions is the name of the game, and woe betide the lecturer whose practice doesn't generate research points or whose strengths lie in teaching and little else.
Peter Suchin from the letters page, Art Monthly, May 2008.
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