Universities are supposed to be pluralistic places for debate and the exchange of ideas, but in the English-speaking world and especially in North America, they have lately become crippled by the politics of wokeness, as embodied by equity and diversity councils, safe spaces, trigger warnings and microaggressions. On these campuses, the world is reduced to an endless struggle between the privileged and the oppressed. As a French national, I have been wondering why we have seen so little of this toxicity and absurdity in my country—outside of radical leftist spaces—especially since French intellectuals played a crucial role in the development of this dualistic worldview. The work of French postmodernists like Jean-François Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze, Julia Kristeva and Michel Mafesolli has become fashionable all over the world—with dangerous ramifications not only for higher education in the west but also for developing countries that have a critical need for useful public intellectuals, as Noam Chomsky has argued. So why hasn’t applied postmodernism taken root in the country that set it in motion half a century ago?
A look at the economics of French and North American higher education systems may shed some light on this. In France, higher education is a right. In North America, it’s a service. French students are students. North American students are clients.
The French state-funded education system has its flaws. Our universities are riddled with debt, which has led to the implementation of austerity policies on several campuses and to waves of staff redundancies. The student/instructor ratio keeps widening. Between 2010 and 2016, the student population grew by 12.7% while the number of tenured professors increased by a meagre 0.2%. As a result, instructors on temporary contracts now account for a quarter of the academic workforce, but these precarious workers can consider themselves lucky. The country’s estimated 130,000 adjunct professors are even worse off, as in most universities they work without a contract (which is illegal) and get paid only €41.41 per contact hour before taxes, typically in biannual instalments. That covers prep work, student correspondence, paperwork, invigilating exams and marking papers. A recent report has suggested that adjuncts are basically working for below minimum wage (which is also illegal).
How is this relevant to social justice? Well, suppose a student starts claiming systemic racism is present on a given campus and requests the creation of an equity and diversity council or a safe space for oppressed minorities. And why not? There is undoubtedly a strong strain of racism and xenophobia in French politics and society. But the answer is going to be extremely straightforward: there is no money or space available. End of story.
The virtual nonexistence of tuition fees in France (an undergrad costs €170 a year) translates into high student numbers that constantly push the limits of the underpaid teachers’ abilities to do their jobs. This affects the instructor/student relationship in a way that leaves no room for cajoling. Unhappy with your mediocre grade? Too bad. Disagree with the teacher? We don’t really have time for that. Prof caught you messing around on Instagram, confiscated your phone and docked you a mark? Serves you right. Teaching methods are outdated? You’re welcome to try another uni. Can’t find the book the professor assigned at the library? Buy it on Amazon. Classroom jammed? Try asking next door for an extra chair. No luck? Sit on the floor. Or don’t.
All this has obvious consequences for the quality of teaching, however much individual teachers may try to provide the best education they can on their university’s shoestring budget. But, in addition, these economic realities make it virtually impossible to have the widespread clientelism you get at Ivy League and other prestigious American institutions, which can afford to dedicate space, time and money to social justice warriors. When Yale charges $55,500 a year for an undergraduate degree, you’d expect students to want more than just quality education.
Tuition fees, which are the product of freewheeling neoliberal economics, have spiralled out of control in the Anglophone world in general and in the US in particular. This translates into astronomical student debt that exacerbates economic inequalities and goes against the democratic principle of freedom of education that should not end after high school. In addition, the for-profit and clientelist model has had some very insidious consequences for other aspects of democratic life by providing students with a customer service that leaves the door wide open for extravagant and unreasonable requests that are, ironically, just as undemocratic. Meanwhile, France clings on to its socialist university model and every French national can attend without worrying about tuition, even though the institution is reaching breaking point and its limitations are glaring. But for better or worse, we have control over the students in our classrooms. Not the reverse.
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The author states that universities have become “crippled by the politics of wokeness, as embodied by equity and diversity councils, safe spaces, trigger warnings and microaggressions.” The word “crippled” implies that that the university cannot function because of these distractions or that they are so widespread that professors cannot function within the classroom environment. The author provides not a single study to prove this assertion. I have taught 60 classes at the University of Ottawa, Canada, and only in one of those classes did this “wokeness” affect the classroom environment. In the other 59 courses, it never occurred at all. I would suggest that this “wokeness” is relatively minor and that students are too busy with classes and part-time jobs to engage in radical activism. Does it exist? Yes, but it is an exaggeration to refer to universities as being “crippled” by diversity councils and the like. Most students are too busy with practical concerns to engage in petty politics.
Then it is no problem at all, I guess, that a tiny minority has hijacked political discourse and terrorizes the majority with its stupid race baiting at workplaces, the boards of companies and all of media. And it is also not the tiniest bit of a problem, that a majority of students, company employees and media entrepreneurs remain silent or are at least worried about their prospects, if becoming more outspoken.
The argument, that it is only a minority is missing the point. It’s a minority that dominates. It is a minority with hegemonial power. A minority that is changing society. Maybe you were smart enough 59 times not to step on any of those minefields, but that’s not a problem either, I guess.
Goy is actually a term used by gay men who don’t engage in anal intercourse. They are more like male body worshippers. So rather than fully “gay” they are “goy.” And yes they too have a support group full of grievance. Also, the Pulse nightclub shooter is Muslim, not white. I’m still shocked how few people know this. It doesn’t help that the MSM refused to cover the trial, which revealed closer connections to radical Islam than even prosecutors had thought, extending to his entire family.
Sounds like the best of a bunch of otherwise bad arguments for Socialism I’ve ever read.
The very prescient early 1950’s science-fictional satire on what we would now call “multiculturalism” and “political correctness” run amok that I earlier today mentioned once reading a long, long time ago was “Tea Tray in the Sky” by Evelyn E. Smith, which originally appeared in the September 1952 issue of GALAXY SCIENCE-FICTION magazine. The story depicted a future world belonging to a “United Universe” of countless extraterrestrial sentient races where the citizens of every world and every race must respect the taboos, customs, and proprieties of all the other worlds and races, so that it is a criminal offense for anyone on any planet to do anything which might be offensive to natives of some other planet–which covers things, considered immoral, improper, anti-social, or ill-bred on one or another planet like eating in the presence of the opposite sex, walking around bare-handed, appearing in public without a head covering, wearing yellow gloves (yellow being the color of death on some worlds), walking more than 200 feet, appearing in public without one’s family, or refusing to share one’s wife with others–though aliens are also forbidden to disparage motherhood, which is sacred among Earthmen! People who find this careful respect for everybody’s customs and taboos too burdensome, however, have the option of joining a “Brotherhood” on a reservation where they are free to obey only their own culture’s customs and ignore everybody else’s. The story’s protagonist is a young man, “Michael Frey,” who has been brought up in one such Brotherhood in the Los Angeles area that his father had joined long ago, and decides to take a tour of the outside world to see whether he might like to join or rather prefer to remain on the reservation. After a day’s tour of future New York City (“Portyork”), he ends up finding the compulsory honoring of everybody’s customs a little oppressive, and deciding to return back home to his (co-ed) Brotherhood and marry his girl-friend back there. The “Brotherhood,” incidentally, has a custom somewhat like that of our Old Order Amish in the Pennsylvania Dutch Country, in that young people are encouraged to spend some time in the outside world to decide whether they like the outside world or their own community better. “Michael Frey” is one such young “Brotherhood” member on his customary coming-of-age visit to the hyper-multicultural world outside the reservation–but after just one day decided he likes the reservation much better!
Insightful comparison, but basic flaw in the assumption that education is a right. It’s a service like everything else and thankfully competition provides some quality assurance EXCEPT that in the US the government guarantees student loans, which in turn creates huge inflationary pressures on tuition, a typical result of such cronyism, rather than competitive pricing as in other services. Both systems are bad, yours for lack of quality, ours for lack of competitive costs. The “woke” phenomenon is a result of a dangerous change in American culture by so called progressives leading the charge against tolerance and freedom of expression. It is the fascist wolf in the sheep’s clothing of false liberalism.
It is certainly felt as a right over here.
It’s becoming a huge problem because we basically have to accept anyone wanting to get in (tuition is negligible and there are no entry exams). As well, we (foolishly in my opinion) tend to encourage high school kids to go to uni immediately after graduating because it’s the thing to do, instead of suggesting that they might get some hard-working, low-paying job to get a glimpse of the real world and to then go travelling for a while to discover the rest of the world (this, I understand, is quite popular in countries like Australia and Germany).
So we end up with student overpopulation and the quality of instruction suffers dramatically. I taught in several departments and on average you’re talking circa 35 students in a tutorial and I even lectured a master’s class that featured 330 students (yes, that’s 330 – I wish I was making this up). Lectures pay slightly better – ca. 62 euros per contact hour before taxes. Do the maths: preparing 15 hours of class content, emails to students and administration, writing the exam, invigilating the exam and marking 330 papers. And it’s not over: for the students who couldn’t attend the exam (dog ate my bus pass, an alien stole my alarm clock, etc.), you have to prepare and mark another exam, because it’s their right.
So believe me, this really, really leaves no room for cajoling students.
May I ask how this applies to France’s elite universities?
Good question. There are entry exams to get into the elite universities (École normale supérieure, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Science po, etc.) so the atmosphere is quite different and the profs get to work with smart and motivated students.
But I suspect you don’t see much cajoling there. It’s not like those elite institutions are exactly flush (I’m pretty sure that the salaries of the professors are the same as in ordinary universities and I think the tuition fees are essentially the same).
I’m happy to hear that France seems to have escaped the excesses of Wokeness. But, France’s 130,000 adjunct professors are paid 41.41 Euros per hour and that’s below the minimum wage!? So, about 2,000 Euros per 50 hour week and 100,000 Euros a year!? So they’re overpaid and France’s minimum wage is absurdly high. All that and the tuition fees are of course paid by the French in their taxes. There is no free lunch, French cuisine or no.
“This translates into astronomical student debt that exacerbates economic inequalities and goes against the democratic principle of freedom of education that should not end after high school.”
No. Free third level education is NOT a democratic principle. Indeed its spread and the resulting credentials inflation work against democracy by requiring university degress for jobs where they are useless or even counter-productive.
I do believe that only the hours in front of students/teaching class are paid, which considerably lowers the wages (to below (the minimum wage in many cases). Regarding education : while it does not require an institution, exams and diplomas, is the only goal of Education the getting of a job ?
Amanc, you may be right, but the author does not define “contract hour”. And no, my opinion is that getting a job is not the only goal of education in its broader sense, but is likely the major goal of most University courses.
Adjuncts make poverty wages. $40 euros per hour is only for the hours in the classroom, which amount to like three hours per class per week. That amount is supposed to cover all the other work they do too, which takes like 20 hours a week at least per class (grading, prepping, traveling to and from class, correspondence, professional development, student office hours). Here in the US we have the same adjunct problem. I know because I have been an adjunct for fifteen years. Adjuncts often are on public assistance because they are paid so little. But in the US, unlike in France, the money in the universities goes to top level administrators, much like corporate CEOs. It sounds like that’s not the case in France.
Thanks. The situation is better here in Ireland, or so academic friends tell me.
John Shea’s remark about “requiring university degrees for jobs where they are useless or even counter-productive” reminds me of a wonderful satirical jab at overblown credentialism in a science-fiction story I once read in the 1960’s about a man from our own time who is zapped into the 22nd or 23rd century AD. Obliged to find a job but realizing he’s got no special high-tech skills for the 22nd/23rd century world, he goes to a department store in early December to seek a part-time job wrapping Christmas packages–but he’s told he needs a college diploma in package-wrapping! Another science-fiction story I remember reading a long, long time ago, by the way, a story actually written in the early 1950’s, satirized exaggerated “woke” cultural sensitivity run amok by depicting a future world in a Galactic federation where everyone is required to respect and in fact themselves observe in public all the cultural practices and especially all the taboos of all the planets in the Galaxy–thus, everybody on Earth must wear a hat in pubic at all times because one of the planets in the Galaxy has a taboo against going bare-headed in public–and nobody on Earth may wear anything yellow in public because there is a planet where yellow is the color of death–and everybody in a big city going more than 200 feet from his house must rent a temporary “family” because again there is a planet with a custom demanding everybody must always travel away from home with their family–the hero, raised on a reservation for Earthlings who don;t want to be pressured into observing everybody else’s cultural sensitivities, ends up going back to his reservation with a great feeling of relief–the story, I remember, was called “Teatray In The Sky,” I believe by Margaret St. Clair, and I believe originally appeared in “Galxt Science Fiction” magazine in 1951, 1952, or 1953.
Tavernier said 41.41€ per CONTACT hour, not per “contract hour.” That means an hour (or perhaps a 50-minute period) of classroom time. An hour of classroom time for university instruction requires on average at least another two hours for preparation and administrative responsibilities, very often three or more, depending on whether the instructor has taught the course before, whether the instructor is teaching several sections of the same course, and other variables. As minimum wage in France is €10.03 per hour, that works out to something better than minimum wage, but not by a whole lot.
Thanks for the clarification, Mr. Rind.