Hi all,
Ken is curious about research freedom in different kinds of schools. Speaking from my
experience of a design school in New Zealand, I think the notion of freedom to research is a
bit of a game (or a dream?) Our current legislation states that all undergraduate degrees
must be 'taught mainly by people engaged in research' (Education Act 1989). During the
1990s design schools were quick to exploit a new-found ability to award degrees and
became skilled at deploying the rhetoric of research, but in reality no one actually did much -
we were too busy developing curricula for masses of students, and up-skilling ourselves in
the process. We are still not quite sure what design research is, anyway. Too much freedom,
perhaps?
Because our universities have been funded on a market model, based on student numbers
and tuition fees, they've had the 'freedom' to develop in any way they pleased.
Unfortunately what they developed, according to the Initial Report of the Tertiary Education
Commission (2000), was an 'excessively competitive ethos' and 'inward looking governance
and management, and tunnel-vision'. Now, the tertiary sector is said to be 'risk averse, full of
perverse incentives that promote homogeneity, mediocrity and credential inflation...'. So
universities are soon to come under the discipline of PBRF (Performance-Based Research
Funding). Perhaps this will reward those who can figure out what counts as design research -
but as with the UK's RAE, I suspect that it will largely reinforce the traditional discipline areas,
and make it difficult to validate new and different kinds of knowledge. We may have missed
our chance!
Amanda Bill
PhD student
Department of Sociology
University of Auckland
phone +64 4 3877057
mobile 027 491 4134
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