let me start by saying that the question
that I’m going to be addressing here is
one that might either seem very obvious
or in fact very difficult and I want to
say that in fact it’s a very difficult
question to answer because if you ask
academics whether they think the
knowledge that they produce is a public
good I think the answer that they would
give you is that self-evidently yes okay
and this has something to do with the
way in which they think about the nature
of the knowledge that they produce
namely it’s something that in principle
is meant for everyone
and all you need to have is the right
credentials and background knowledge and
oh all of a sudden things start to get
tricky because of course the background
knowledge that you actually need to have
in order to access academic knowledge is
one that typically requires that you go
under academic training and so to give
you a sense of how this is a kind of
complicated issue I want you to think
about what two phrases mean that are
very much part of the popular culture in
which we live one is the idea of
knowledge being open access okay and
when we talk about that in the academic
world what we usually mean is that there
are journals that the University perhaps
has paid a subscription to and so forth
but one of the consequences of it is
that anyone can have access anywhere on
the internet if they can just access it
however that idea doesn’t necessarily
enable anyone to be able to make sense
of the content of the knowledge that’s
located in those journals okay because
basically you need to be educated in
exactly the same way as the people who
wrote the articles who are in those
journals so in this respect open access
in terms of providing free access that’s
to say free from a purely financial
standpoint the academic knowledge only
benefits those who are already
academically trained
okay that’s open access there’s another
phrase that we also use as well and it’s
called open source okay open source is
where you can actually intervene in the
knowledge that is being produced so we
talked about open source very often in
the context of computer codes and things
like this where there’s a sense in which
there’s already a kind of body of
knowledge you might say that it’s
already there but the the the issue here
is who can actually intervene and change
and contribute to it in some fashion
when we talk about knowledge being open
source we’re operating on the assumption
that the people who are consuming the
knowledge are potential producers of the
knowledge right there isn’t this kind of
asymmetry right and what I would like to
argue in this context is that academic
knowledge normally speaking is open
access perhaps but not open source okay
and in order for academic knowledge to
be a public good in the proper sense it
has to be open source just as much as
it’s open access okay and that is the
proposition that I want to sort of put
on the table for you to think about now
when we talk about something as being a
public good in economics because that’s
where the phrase comes from public good
it’s an it’s a phrase from economics and
the idea here is that it would actually
cost more to restrict access to the good
than it would to allow the good to be
freely available okay so it’s a it’s
really about the issue of the cost of
access that’s kind of what the public
good idea is about and so you know so
when this idea was first put forward the
the point was that actually there’s
certain if you’re you know what is the
goal that we’re thinking about when
we’re talking about goods in general
well the idea generally speaking is that
we’re talking about something that can
benefit the well-being or welfare of an
entire society or group or community or
market in other words make them more
productive to put it in the real
economists terms and there are going to
be certain kinds of goods that if you
restrict access to them they actually
inhibit the overall capacity of the
society to be able to be productive in
the way that would benefit everyone okay
and so there is actually something to be
said for making those kinds of Goods
freely available now academic knowledge
actually doesn’t have this character
this is the point it doesn’t have this
character in its current form and why is
that because there are actually access
costs to academic knowledge and that is
because the only way typically in which
anyone outside of academia can get
access to this knowledge is by being
trained at academia academically right
if you want to read a scientific journal
article if you want to make sense of
what’s going on in all these
professional journals and things like
this you typically need to have some
kind of academic training so even if the
knowledge is out there available for
free on the internet
if you have not been trained properly
you cannot make sense of what’s going on
okay that is still an access cost just
because it’s not a financial cost
doesn’t mean it’s not an access cost and
this is where academic knowledge rather
than being a public good is normally
speaking a club good that is to say it
is kind of good that in a sense the
value of it has a lot to do with already
being an insider okay think about clubs
right you get certain benefits by virtue
of paying a subscription and you often
need to pay you know when you pay the
subscription part of it has to do with
your having gone through some kind of
vetting procedure in advance and so
forth and then you become member of the
club and you can do certain things and
know certain things that people outside
the club cannot know okay academic
knowledge de facto regardless of all the
rhetoric and
hype surrounding it is for the most part
a club good okay and it’s a club good if
we’re understanding academic knowledge
primarily at the level of the research
publication okay because so far
everything I’ve been talking about with
regard to academic knowledge has been
about journal articles and the writings
and publications of academics and so
that is the thing that often claims to
be a public good but as in fact I would
argue a club good so the question then
becomes well then where do we get this
idea of academic knowledge being a
public good in the first place given
that in fact if you want to make sense
of anything that academics are doing you
have to already have some academic
training so there’s an enormous amount
of access cost to it how do we even get
this idea that academic knowledge is a
public good and here I think this goes
to the heart of what a university is
supposed to be okay so here what I want
to race is that when we think about this
problem if we think that this idea of
academic knowledge is a public good is
not really you know doesn’t really live
up to its hype the reason probably is
because universities aren’t quite doing
what they’re doing
in other words universities ought to be
in the business in fact they ought to be
in the unique business of manufacturing
knowledge as a public good okay and let
me explain what I mean by that and this
has a lot to do with how we should be
thinking about the relationship between
research and teaching because I haven’t
said anything about teaching yet but
it’s through the teaching process that
actually knowledge gets academic
knowledge gets turned into a public good
and without the teaching process being
seen as integral to what happens to
research once it’s done you are never
going to make academic knowledge a
public good okay so let me explain where
I’m coming from here I mean there’s one
level at which I’m coming from which I’m
coming from and that
has to do with the kind of classical
definition of the University of Vilhelm
von Humboldt in the beginning of the
19th century who came up with this idea
that what the university was about was
about this kind of integration or unity
or synthesis of research and teaching
and the academic as a professional
vocation right embodied that combination
right and that was the unique thing
about being in academic that was the
thing that academics did that nobody
else did is they did both research and
teaching right because we’ve had people
doing research you know for eons and
many of them didn’t really have much to
do with teaching especially if we teach
if we think about teaching from the
standpoint of trying to bestow knowledge
on people who don’t already have the
background and in some sense need to be
introduced to the background and who may
in fact once they get the knowledge may
not be taking it in the direction of the
people who produce the knowledge right
for me this is the kind of robust
understanding of teaching that I think
one needs to have to see teaching is
different from research teaching is
something more than just reproducing the
research culture on a small scale ok
teaching is a really different thing
from research and unless you have the
two things combined together you are not
going to be able to make academic
knowledge into a public good ok so this
is the point and this was very much part
of the founding of the modern University
with Vilhelm von Humboldt it’s a very
classical ideal and what I’m just the
way I’m expressing it here is trying to
be bring this ideal up-to-date in a
period where I think across the world we
see the research culture going in one
direction and the teaching culture going
in another direction and in fact being
rewarded differently being subsidized
differently I mean anyone who is
familiar with higher education and
not only in the UK but across the world
know exactly what I’m talking about
there is a sense in which the Humboldt
Ian mission of the modern University is
being torn apart everyday okay but if
you don’t if you allow this to be torn
apart if you allow the research and
teaching functions to be torn apart you
will not have academic knowledge
produced as a public good it will be a
club good it will be the preserve of the
people who are able to go through the
training in the terms that the
researchers think about it there will be
no obligation actually to translate or
transfer that elite form of knowledge
into a knowledge that a larger
population can understand and do
something which with which is exactly
what is important about the idea of
public it is to remove the access costs
to entry right again going back to the
economist definition of what a public
good is it is to remove the access costs
to entry and where does that happen in
academia it doesn’t happen in the
graduate programs where where you end up
getting knowledge reproduced at the
elite level for purposes of primarily
publishing in elite journals but rather
you get it at the teaching level and
primarily at the undergraduate level
okay that is the way in which academic
knowledge becomes part of something that
can be seriously called a public good
now how to think about this matter in
contemporary terms I have a certain way
of thinking about this which I’ve been
promoting now for for many years and I
really think we need to think about
teaching as engaged in an activity
that’s quite like what the great
economist Joseph Schumpeter talked about
as creative destruction okay for those
of you who know something about the
history of Technology and maybe the
history of capitalism more generally you
will know that
Schumpeter introduced this concept of
creative destruction to describe the
innovative character
capitalism and the question that becomes
what is so innovative about capitalism
isn’t just about producing greater
wealth but it’s kind of the way it does
it and the way it does it is by
disrupting markets in a very radical way
so Schumpeter’s own example was Henry
Ford Henry Ford introduces the motor car
into an environment where people up to
that point thought about personal
transport primarily in terms of riding
on horseback and that had its own kind
of market its own kind of values
attached to it and people were dealing
in that Henry Ford basically transformed
the market by reconceptualizing the
fundamental values of personal transport
into a new form and a new form that made
it more available to more people less
expensively that is the creative
destruction of the market okay that is
Schumpeter’s primary example now
teaching in general can do exactly this
kind of innovative function okay because
the idea here is that the teacher knows
the esoteric knowledge knows the
restricted not markets in which it plays
but then realizes ah there’s actually a
way of presenting pretty much the same
content in a way that can better enable
more people to have access to it and
take this knowledge in farther and
farther in greater directions than would
normally be the case if we just let it
sit in the current markets where it
normally flourishes okay and so in other
words part of what teaching does you
might say is to undermine the inherently
elite standing that any kind of research
knowledge has because look at the end of
the day we have to admit it as academics
that the first landfall you might say of
new research if it’s going to be
recognized by academics is in elite
academic journals so it starts off being
esoteric it starts off as being the kind
of knowledge only relic
few people will know and so then the
question becomes what does the
university do about this does it just
encourage more of the same behavior
right or does it in fact try to provide
incentives whereby one tries you know in
a regular basis with the large numbers
of students that academics are exposed
to in the classroom to try to translate
even perhaps reduce god-forbid
vulgarized
this kind of elite form of knowledge in
a way that actually enables more and
more people to be empowered by it okay
this is what I’m talking about here this
is the the if we buy into this idea that
in a sense what one needs to do is to
make academic research more available
more accessible in the classroom to
people who do not come from the same
backgrounds as the original researchers
and who will not take that knowledge in
the same directions necessarily as the
original researchers then we will have
produced academic knowledge as a public
good and so this to me becomes a
contemporary argument an argument for
our own times about why we should have
the unity of research and teaching in
the university and that when we are
hiring academic staff we should think
about the qualifications of people who
can do both in one person thank you
you
that I’m going to be addressing here is
one that might either seem very obvious
or in fact very difficult and I want to
say that in fact it’s a very difficult
question to answer because if you ask
academics whether they think the
knowledge that they produce is a public
good I think the answer that they would
give you is that self-evidently yes okay
and this has something to do with the
way in which they think about the nature
of the knowledge that they produce
namely it’s something that in principle
is meant for everyone
and all you need to have is the right
credentials and background knowledge and
oh all of a sudden things start to get
tricky because of course the background
knowledge that you actually need to have
in order to access academic knowledge is
one that typically requires that you go
under academic training and so to give
you a sense of how this is a kind of
complicated issue I want you to think
about what two phrases mean that are
very much part of the popular culture in
which we live one is the idea of
knowledge being open access okay and
when we talk about that in the academic
world what we usually mean is that there
are journals that the University perhaps
has paid a subscription to and so forth
but one of the consequences of it is
that anyone can have access anywhere on
the internet if they can just access it
however that idea doesn’t necessarily
enable anyone to be able to make sense
of the content of the knowledge that’s
located in those journals okay because
basically you need to be educated in
exactly the same way as the people who
wrote the articles who are in those
journals so in this respect open access
in terms of providing free access that’s
to say free from a purely financial
standpoint the academic knowledge only
benefits those who are already
academically trained
okay that’s open access there’s another
phrase that we also use as well and it’s
called open source okay open source is
where you can actually intervene in the
knowledge that is being produced so we
talked about open source very often in
the context of computer codes and things
like this where there’s a sense in which
there’s already a kind of body of
knowledge you might say that it’s
already there but the the the issue here
is who can actually intervene and change
and contribute to it in some fashion
when we talk about knowledge being open
source we’re operating on the assumption
that the people who are consuming the
knowledge are potential producers of the
knowledge right there isn’t this kind of
asymmetry right and what I would like to
argue in this context is that academic
knowledge normally speaking is open
access perhaps but not open source okay
and in order for academic knowledge to
be a public good in the proper sense it
has to be open source just as much as
it’s open access okay and that is the
proposition that I want to sort of put
on the table for you to think about now
when we talk about something as being a
public good in economics because that’s
where the phrase comes from public good
it’s an it’s a phrase from economics and
the idea here is that it would actually
cost more to restrict access to the good
than it would to allow the good to be
freely available okay so it’s a it’s
really about the issue of the cost of
access that’s kind of what the public
good idea is about and so you know so
when this idea was first put forward the
the point was that actually there’s
certain if you’re you know what is the
goal that we’re thinking about when
we’re talking about goods in general
well the idea generally speaking is that
we’re talking about something that can
benefit the well-being or welfare of an
entire society or group or community or
market in other words make them more
productive to put it in the real
economists terms and there are going to
be certain kinds of goods that if you
restrict access to them they actually
inhibit the overall capacity of the
society to be able to be productive in
the way that would benefit everyone okay
and so there is actually something to be
said for making those kinds of Goods
freely available now academic knowledge
actually doesn’t have this character
this is the point it doesn’t have this
character in its current form and why is
that because there are actually access
costs to academic knowledge and that is
because the only way typically in which
anyone outside of academia can get
access to this knowledge is by being
trained at academia academically right
if you want to read a scientific journal
article if you want to make sense of
what’s going on in all these
professional journals and things like
this you typically need to have some
kind of academic training so even if the
knowledge is out there available for
free on the internet
if you have not been trained properly
you cannot make sense of what’s going on
okay that is still an access cost just
because it’s not a financial cost
doesn’t mean it’s not an access cost and
this is where academic knowledge rather
than being a public good is normally
speaking a club good that is to say it
is kind of good that in a sense the
value of it has a lot to do with already
being an insider okay think about clubs
right you get certain benefits by virtue
of paying a subscription and you often
need to pay you know when you pay the
subscription part of it has to do with
your having gone through some kind of
vetting procedure in advance and so
forth and then you become member of the
club and you can do certain things and
know certain things that people outside
the club cannot know okay academic
knowledge de facto regardless of all the
rhetoric and
hype surrounding it is for the most part
a club good okay and it’s a club good if
we’re understanding academic knowledge
primarily at the level of the research
publication okay because so far
everything I’ve been talking about with
regard to academic knowledge has been
about journal articles and the writings
and publications of academics and so
that is the thing that often claims to
be a public good but as in fact I would
argue a club good so the question then
becomes well then where do we get this
idea of academic knowledge being a
public good in the first place given
that in fact if you want to make sense
of anything that academics are doing you
have to already have some academic
training so there’s an enormous amount
of access cost to it how do we even get
this idea that academic knowledge is a
public good and here I think this goes
to the heart of what a university is
supposed to be okay so here what I want
to race is that when we think about this
problem if we think that this idea of
academic knowledge is a public good is
not really you know doesn’t really live
up to its hype the reason probably is
because universities aren’t quite doing
what they’re doing
in other words universities ought to be
in the business in fact they ought to be
in the unique business of manufacturing
knowledge as a public good okay and let
me explain what I mean by that and this
has a lot to do with how we should be
thinking about the relationship between
research and teaching because I haven’t
said anything about teaching yet but
it’s through the teaching process that
actually knowledge gets academic
knowledge gets turned into a public good
and without the teaching process being
seen as integral to what happens to
research once it’s done you are never
going to make academic knowledge a
public good okay so let me explain where
I’m coming from here I mean there’s one
level at which I’m coming from which I’m
coming from and that
has to do with the kind of classical
definition of the University of Vilhelm
von Humboldt in the beginning of the
19th century who came up with this idea
that what the university was about was
about this kind of integration or unity
or synthesis of research and teaching
and the academic as a professional
vocation right embodied that combination
right and that was the unique thing
about being in academic that was the
thing that academics did that nobody
else did is they did both research and
teaching right because we’ve had people
doing research you know for eons and
many of them didn’t really have much to
do with teaching especially if we teach
if we think about teaching from the
standpoint of trying to bestow knowledge
on people who don’t already have the
background and in some sense need to be
introduced to the background and who may
in fact once they get the knowledge may
not be taking it in the direction of the
people who produce the knowledge right
for me this is the kind of robust
understanding of teaching that I think
one needs to have to see teaching is
different from research teaching is
something more than just reproducing the
research culture on a small scale ok
teaching is a really different thing
from research and unless you have the
two things combined together you are not
going to be able to make academic
knowledge into a public good ok so this
is the point and this was very much part
of the founding of the modern University
with Vilhelm von Humboldt it’s a very
classical ideal and what I’m just the
way I’m expressing it here is trying to
be bring this ideal up-to-date in a
period where I think across the world we
see the research culture going in one
direction and the teaching culture going
in another direction and in fact being
rewarded differently being subsidized
differently I mean anyone who is
familiar with higher education and
not only in the UK but across the world
know exactly what I’m talking about
there is a sense in which the Humboldt
Ian mission of the modern University is
being torn apart everyday okay but if
you don’t if you allow this to be torn
apart if you allow the research and
teaching functions to be torn apart you
will not have academic knowledge
produced as a public good it will be a
club good it will be the preserve of the
people who are able to go through the
training in the terms that the
researchers think about it there will be
no obligation actually to translate or
transfer that elite form of knowledge
into a knowledge that a larger
population can understand and do
something which with which is exactly
what is important about the idea of
public it is to remove the access costs
to entry right again going back to the
economist definition of what a public
good is it is to remove the access costs
to entry and where does that happen in
academia it doesn’t happen in the
graduate programs where where you end up
getting knowledge reproduced at the
elite level for purposes of primarily
publishing in elite journals but rather
you get it at the teaching level and
primarily at the undergraduate level
okay that is the way in which academic
knowledge becomes part of something that
can be seriously called a public good
now how to think about this matter in
contemporary terms I have a certain way
of thinking about this which I’ve been
promoting now for for many years and I
really think we need to think about
teaching as engaged in an activity
that’s quite like what the great
economist Joseph Schumpeter talked about
as creative destruction okay for those
of you who know something about the
history of Technology and maybe the
history of capitalism more generally you
will know that
Schumpeter introduced this concept of
creative destruction to describe the
innovative character
capitalism and the question that becomes
what is so innovative about capitalism
isn’t just about producing greater
wealth but it’s kind of the way it does
it and the way it does it is by
disrupting markets in a very radical way
so Schumpeter’s own example was Henry
Ford Henry Ford introduces the motor car
into an environment where people up to
that point thought about personal
transport primarily in terms of riding
on horseback and that had its own kind
of market its own kind of values
attached to it and people were dealing
in that Henry Ford basically transformed
the market by reconceptualizing the
fundamental values of personal transport
into a new form and a new form that made
it more available to more people less
expensively that is the creative
destruction of the market okay that is
Schumpeter’s primary example now
teaching in general can do exactly this
kind of innovative function okay because
the idea here is that the teacher knows
the esoteric knowledge knows the
restricted not markets in which it plays
but then realizes ah there’s actually a
way of presenting pretty much the same
content in a way that can better enable
more people to have access to it and
take this knowledge in farther and
farther in greater directions than would
normally be the case if we just let it
sit in the current markets where it
normally flourishes okay and so in other
words part of what teaching does you
might say is to undermine the inherently
elite standing that any kind of research
knowledge has because look at the end of
the day we have to admit it as academics
that the first landfall you might say of
new research if it’s going to be
recognized by academics is in elite
academic journals so it starts off being
esoteric it starts off as being the kind
of knowledge only relic
few people will know and so then the
question becomes what does the
university do about this does it just
encourage more of the same behavior
right or does it in fact try to provide
incentives whereby one tries you know in
a regular basis with the large numbers
of students that academics are exposed
to in the classroom to try to translate
even perhaps reduce god-forbid
vulgarized
this kind of elite form of knowledge in
a way that actually enables more and
more people to be empowered by it okay
this is what I’m talking about here this
is the the if we buy into this idea that
in a sense what one needs to do is to
make academic research more available
more accessible in the classroom to
people who do not come from the same
backgrounds as the original researchers
and who will not take that knowledge in
the same directions necessarily as the
original researchers then we will have
produced academic knowledge as a public
good and so this to me becomes a
contemporary argument an argument for
our own times about why we should have
the unity of research and teaching in
the university and that when we are
hiring academic staff we should think
about the qualifications of people who
can do both in one person thank you
you
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