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Palgrave Critical University Studies

Series Editors
John Smyth
University of Huddersfield
Huddersfield
United Kingdom
Universities everywhere are experiencing unprecedented changes and
most of the changes being inflicted upon universities are being imposed
by political and policy elites without any debate or discussion, and little
understanding of what is being lost, jettisoned, damaged or destroyed.
The over-arching intent of this series is to foster, encourage, and publish
scholarship relating to academia that is troubled by the direction of these
reforms occurring around the world. The series provides a much-needed
forum for the intensive and extensive discussion of the consequences of ill-
conceived and inappropriate university reforms and will do this with
particular emphasis on those perspectives and groups whose views have
hitherto been ignored, disparaged or silenced. The series explores the
effects of these changes across a number of domains including: the
nature of academic work, the process of knowledge production for
social and public good, along with students’ experiences of learning,
leadership and institutional politics research. The defining hallmark of
this series, and what makes it markedly different from any other series
with a focus on universities and higher education, is its ‘criticalist agenda’.

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14707
 Michał Izak • Monika Kostera • Michał Zawadzki
Editors

The Future of
University Education
Editors
Michał Izak Monika Kostera
Lincoln Business School Durham University
University of Lincoln Durham, UK
Lincoln, United Kingdom

Michał Zawadzki
Institute of Culture
Jagiellonian University
Cracow, Poland

Palgrave Critical University Studies

ISBN 978-3-319-46893-8 ISBN 978-3-319-46894-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016956861

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

This book was advertised with a copyright holder in the name of the publisher in error, whereas
the author holds the copyright.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration © The National Trust Photolibrary / Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE

Naming this book as a Critical University Studies Series gives it a very

distinct and clear agenda. The over-arching intent is to foster, encourage
and publish scholarship relating to universities that is troubled by the
direction of reforms occurring around the world.
It is a no-brainer, that universities everywhere are experiencing unpre-
cedented changes. What is much less clear, and there are reasons for the
lack of transparency, are the effects of these changes within and across a
number of domains, including:

• The nature of academic work

• Students’ experiences of learning
• Leadership and institutional politics
• Research and the process of knowledge production, and the
• Social and public good

Most of the changes being inflicted upon universities globally are being
imposed by political and policy elites without any debate or discussion,
and little understanding of what is being lost, jettisoned, damaged or
destroyed. Benefits, where they are articulated at all, are framed exclusively
in terms of short-term political gains. This is not a recipe for a robust and
vibrant university system.
What this series seeks to do is provide a much-needed forum for the
intensive and extensive discussion of the consequences of ill-conceived and
inappropriate university reforms. It does this with particular emphasis on

v
vi SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE

those perspectives and groups whose views have hitherto been ignored,
disparaged or silenced.
The defining hallmark of the series, and what makes it markedly differ-
ent from any other series with a focus on universities and higher education,
is its ‘criticalist agenda’. By that we mean the books raise questions like:

• Whose interests are being served?

• How is power being exercised and upon whom?
• What means are being promulgated to ensure subjugation?
• What might a more transformational approach look like?
• What are the impediments to this happening?
• What then, needs be done about it?

The series intends to foster the following kind of contributions:

• Critical studies of university contexts, while they might be local in

nature, are shown to be global in their reach.
• Insightful and authoritative accounts that are courageous and that
‘speak back’ to dominant reforms being inflicted on universities.
• Critical accounts of research relating to universities that use innova-
tive methodologies.
• Looking at what is happening to universities across disciplinary fields,
and internationally.
• Examining trends, patterns and themes, and presenting them in a
way that re-theorizes and re-invigorates knowledge around the status
and purposes of universities.
• Above all, advancing the publication of accounts that re-position the
study of universities in a way that makes clear what alternative robust
policy directions for universities might look like.

The series aims to encourage discussion of issues like academic work, aca-
demic freedom and marketization in universities. One of the shortcomings of
many extant texts in the field of university studies is that they attempt too
much, and as a consequence their focus becomes diluted. There is an urgent
need for studies in a number of aspects with quite a sharp focus. For example:

(1) There is a conspicuous absence of studies that give existential

accounts of what life is like for students in the contemporary uni-
versity. We need to know more about the nature of the stresses and
 SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE vii

strains, and the consequences these market-driven distortions have

for the learning experiences of students, their lives and futures.
(2) We know very little about the nature and form of how institutional
politics are engineered and played out, by whom, in what ways and
with what consequences in the neoliberal university. We need
‘insider’ studies that unmask the forces that sustain and maintain
and enable current reform trajectories in universities.
(3) The actions of policy elites transnationally are crucial to what is
happening in universities worldwide. But we are yet to become
privy to the thinking that is going on, and how it is legitimated and
transmitted, and the means by which it is made opaque. We need
studies that puncture this veil of silence.
(4) None of what is happening that is converting universities into
annexes of the economy would be possible without a particular
version of leadership having been allowed to become dominant. We
need to know how this is occurring, what forms of resistance there
have been to it, how it has been suppressed and the forms of
solidarity necessary to unsettle and supplant this dominant
paradigm.
(5) Finally, and taking the lead from critical geographers, there is a
pressing need for studies with a focus on universities as unique
spaces and places—possibly in concert with sociologists and
anthropologists.

We look forward to this series advancing these important agenda and to

the reclamation and restitution of universities as crucial intellectual demo-
cratic institutions.

John Smyth, Series Editor

Professor of Education and Social Justice
University of Huddersfield, UK &
Emeritus Professor, Federation University Australia
 CONTENTS

1 Introduction: The Future of University Education 1

Michał Izak, Monika Kostera and Michał Zawadzki

Part I Dissecting the Status Quo

2 Academic Freedom in the Corporate University:

Squandering Our Inheritance? 19
Carl Rhodes

3 The University of the Common: Beyond

the Contradictions of Higher Education
Subsumed under Capital 39
Krystian Szadkowski

4 “The Last in the Food Chain”: Dignity of Polish Junior

Academics and Doctoral Candidates in the Face of
Performance Management 63
Michał Zawadzki

5 The Culture of Control in the Contemporary University 85

Łukasz Sułkowski

ix
x CONTENTS

Part II University in Context

6 Living in a World of Foam: Global Ideas, Bubbles,

Institutions and the Fairy Tale of Business
Education 111
Carmelo Mazza and Paolo Quattrone

7 The Future of the University? Social Activism among

Young Polish Scholars 123
Krzysztof Leja and Anna M. Kola

8 University as a Terminal: Socio-Material

Infrastructure for Post-Neoliberal
Society 145
Krzysztof Nawratek

Part III Teaching and Research

9 McLearning and the So-Called Knowledge Society:

An Essay 159
Roy Jacques

10 Neoliberalism’s War against Higher Education

and the Role of Public Intellectuals 185
Henry A. Giroux

11 Re-Imagining Business Schools of the Future as Places

of Theorizing 207
Hugo Gaggiotti, Peter Simpson
and Svetlana Cicmil

12 Re-Integrating the Professional Learner:

The Complementarity of Teaching
and Research in Academic Life 227
David Sims
 CONTENTS xi

Part IV Into the Future

13 Escape from the Neo-Liberal Higher Education Prison:

A Proposal for a New Digital Communist University 245
Roger Hallam

14 A Curious and Collaborative Future 271

Todd Hannula

15 Speculations on University Futures in 2025: Corporate

Cloning, Intellectual Underground, and a New Critical
Awareness 293
George Cairns

16 2021: A Campus Odyssey 309

Monika Kostera

17 Anti-Coda 329
Michał Izak, Monika Kostera and Michał Zawadzki

Index 337
 LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.1 Dignity at work 66

Table 5.1 Selected “neoliberal” management methods in public
sectors 88
Table 5.2 The axis of cultural change in universities 103

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: The Future of University

Education

Michał Izak, Monika Kostera and Michał Zawadzki

LEGACY
Gazing at Raphael’s masterpiece The School of Athens, one is confronted with
a range of characters epitomizing distinct branches of knowledge – predo-
minantly represented by ancient philosophers, and firmly presided by Plato
and Aristotle positioned in the centre of the composition – debating, dis-
cussing and arguing. The spirit of theoretical exchange and intellectual pur-
suit imbues the canvass; whether protagonists are freely gesticulating,
reading or plunging deeply in their thoughts, they are clearly at liberty to
choose their style and their way of seeking for truth and understanding.

M. Izak (*)
University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
M. Kostera
Durham University, Durham, UK
Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden
e-mail: [email protected]
M. Zawadzki
Institute of Culture, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2017 1

M. Izak et al. (eds.), The Future of University Education,
Palgrave Critical University Studies,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5_1
2 M. IZAK ET AL.

Indeed, both Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum (although – if

Cicero is to be believed – neither of the two was the actual founder of his
respective institution) could hardly be farther from the educational frame-
work of top-down instruction, and certainly in neither institution a model
of the modern master teacher was embraced. While Raphael’s work
suggests some sort of institutionalization, likely of ecclesiastical origin
(Janson and Janson 1997), despite both educational initiatives having
physically emerged in ancient Athens, they have not intended to concep-
tually re-appropriate the premises for pure educational purpose:
Academeia was considered a public park and Lyceum a gymnasium in its
proper sense, in which apart from intellectual displays physical (including
military) displays would also likely take place (Lynch 1972). Rather than a
formal institution, Academy was a gathering of people interested in pursu-
ing a particular field of study, e.g. mathematics, philosophy or astronomy,
through dialectical exchange with their tutor, leading to establishing an
argument or solving a disagreement. Lyceum was just as informal, though
Aristotle’s decades-long experience as a member of Academia filtered
through his unique methodological sensibility and resulted in emphasizing
the importance of research in addition to teaching: the sound judgement
was to be formed on the factual grounds following from inquiry, and the
former was easier to establish if the facts were first acquired and only then
discussed (Pedersen 1997). In both cases, however, learning was an inher-
ently intellectual process empowering the learner – to be able to reason
better, using available methods and clues as well as (especially in Lyceum)
mastering new ones, was its very goal. Both also stressed the comprehen-
sive development of the learner, not only his (almost exclusively his,
although Academia admitted women, exceptionally) narrowly defined set
of skills, in this way anticipating the humanist notions (Pedersen 1997).
Consequently, the instructor would be a master of method rather than a
data bank; he would facilitate the inquiry process, while the student could,
in fact should, surpass him in terms of factual expertise. Those gatherings
were relatively non-hierarchical and open (although caveats, e.g. gender
related, would apply to both), in opposition to many other schools active at
the time (e.g. Pythagorean). The key was to create a sense of community of
the pursuers/lovers (Philo) of wisdom (Sophia).
The Justinian reforms (529 AD) temporarily put an end to this philo-
sophically inclined educational activity (in fact, it is likely that Peripatetic
school had already been inactive at that point), and for the following three
centuries educational activity was performed almost exclusively in
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE FUTURE OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 3

monastic communities. While due to turbulent times most Carolingian

reforms (ninth century AD) were short-lived, Charlemagne’s dream to
establish the monastic education as a source of know-how and leadership
within, but also beyond, the Church, resulted in the emerging of a limited
number of schools, the curriculum and rationale of which were bounded
to serve Church’s needs1. While the trivium’s (grammar, rhetoric and
logic) goal was to endow the priest with the ability to speak well and be
inspiring, the higher course of study, quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry,
astronomy and music), was largely designed to make him a good manager
of (again, Church’s) property and income. Starting from the eleventh
century AD, the four-part curriculum enabled for developing of expertise
and thus introduced a variation between the types of instruction provided
in different schools (e.g. Orlean school specialized in classical studies, and
Bec monastery headed by Anselm in Law studies). However, the monastic
form of learning showed little variety – a text generally accepted as
important (e.g. The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius) would be read
aloud by the instructor and copied by the students. Then, instructor’s
further explanations would follow and would be noted by the students on
the margins. While manifold political and social factors also came into play
(see: Pedersen 1997), it is against this background and largely in opposi-
tion to the ex cathedra model of instruction that in late eleventh and early
twelfth century the university would emerge.
The Paris and Bologna Universitas – the unions of students and masters –
were inspired by the political drive to independence as much as motivated
by the will to teach and learn differently, the latter and former being
mutually associated with one another. Unidirectional instruction gave way
to the right to debate, scrutinize arguments and criticize in the spirit of
scholastic method. The rationale of developing future members of clergy
became transformed in developing oneself as a skilled thinker, speaker and
researcher. University as a concept – so keenly embraced in many European
countries from the mid- twelfth century throughout the high Middle Ages –
drew from ancient roots embodying the principles of freedom of inquiry
(even if bounded towards particle types of consideration or directed towards
developing particular types of mind frames characteristic to e.g. law and
medicine) and independence from particular ideologies or social pressures
(even if those were also historically infringed on numerous occasions
[Minogue 1973]).
According to some accounts, to modern days, the right to academic
freedom is – next to the right to some form of self-government and the
4 M. IZAK ET AL.

right of conferring its own degrees – one of the major determinants

making an educational institution a university (Hamlyn 1996). It is not
to say that university education ever was or should be considered in the
utter disconnection from wider social and institutional frameworks in
which it is unfolding: freedom to pursue knowledge may come at a cost,
especially if the state is involved in financing it (Hamlyn 1996). On the
contrary, institutional freedom is supposed to be conscious of the condi-
tions of its own existence. Within these very frames, academic freedom can
blossom, potentially turning those very limitations into objects of inquiry
(Hamlyn 1996). This freedom however needs to be further qualified; after
all, surely, it does not entail every possible aim, course of action or agenda
(some of which could potentially be explicitly anti-humanist in every
possible sense). In addition, as we are reminded in this volume by Carl
Rhodes and Roy Stager Jacques, respectively, that academic freedom must
never be taken for granted and should never be reified, as it has been
differently construed in different times and places.
While Allen Philip Griffith’s attempt to deduce the very essence of
university can be rightfully criticized for methodological reasons
(Hamlyn 1996), nevertheless his proposition that universities essentially
aim to pursue the deeper understanding of universal objects, and that this
process entails the reciprocal relationship between the learner and the very
object of learning (1965), in many ways approximates the sentiments
shared by the editors of this volume. First, we believe, university and the
educational process within it should assume deep study – an attempt to
embrace the object of learning from a multiplicity of angles and appreciat-
ing the different roles it may fulfil in different social and political agendas.
For example, a particular historical fact may demonstrate itself differently
depending on the context (e.g. national and cultural) in which it is being
discussed. Second (and consequently), studying at the university level
would mean enabling for the object of study to come into dynamic
relationship with its agent: how we approach what we learn affects the
outcome, and the latter may, reciprocally, affect the learner. As we learn
more, we change our attitude towards the objects of learning (e.g. by
contextualizing them), and also potentially affect the future modes of
existence of those objects by e.g. reshaping their social perception.
Finally, the things we learn are expected to be sufficiently universal to
allow for this multiplicity of perspectives and dynamism of the learning
process to occur; i.e. there are other educational contexts for learning how
to cut hair, while hairdressing as a socially embedded practice could be an
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE FUTURE OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 5

object of study for e.g. a candidate for the BA degree in Sociology.

The university, therefore, should enable for an open-minded, thorough,
contextualized and self-reflexive inquiry regarding objects of general inter-
est – such inquiries push forth our understanding of a variety of phenom-
ena, but should not be compelled to contribute to only particular,
narrowly defined interests and agendas.
Conceiving of university through a historical process of its emergence,
both as a notion and as a practice, provides a platform for reconsidering
the current attempts to reshape it, conceptually as much as practically. This
volume hopes to provide an opportunity for reflection on such changes in
terms of identifying their main characteristics and rationales. To the extent
some of them are deemed disconcerting by students and faculty members,
it also aims to initiate the process of formulating a well-informed response.

PAIDEIA
The cultural mission of the university is defined by Henry Giroux (2010)
as an obligation to constantly critically reflect on the sociocultural envir-
onment and intervene in the reality in order to initiate changes to it.
According to the philosophy of radical pedagogy, which we consider
important for our reflection upon academia (Freire 2001; McLaren
2002; Giroux 2010), the university remains a unique place to prepare
students both to understand and influence the larger social forces that
shape our lives. It is a special fragment of the public sphere, where people
should be able to combine hope and moral responsibility with the pro-
ductivity of knowledge as a part of broader emancipatory discourse.
Higher education must be considered a vital component of a mature
public sphere (Bloom 1987). Only then can it offer students and aca-
demics the opportunity to involve themselves in the most acute problems
of the society and acquire the knowledge, skills and ethical vocabulary
necessary for modes of critical dialogue and forms of a broadened civic
participation.
It is important to develop a proper educational context for students, so
that they can come to terms with their own sense of power and train their
public voice as individuals and as potential social agents (Collini 2012).
Universities should assist students-citizens by enabling them to examine
and frame critically relevant questions. Students-citizens should be aware
that what they learn in the classroom is part of a much broader and
fundamental understanding of what it means to live in a global democracy
6 M. IZAK ET AL.

(Nussbaum 2010). That is why the main element, which allows the
university a possibility to generate democratic changes in the society, is
cultural competence; thus it is first and foremost knowledge acquired in a
reflexive way by academics and students. The ability to think critically,
enabling to intervene in the reality, results from the development of such
cultural competence based on symbolic capital. This kind of capital can
only be accumulated as a result of passionate interaction with knowledge.
Today, such interactions are disappearing under the influence of the
short-term demands of the societies and markets. Surrender of universities
to these demands turns them into closed systems incapable of critical
intervention in the reality (Biesta 2013). The current instrumental pres-
sures relieve the university from its traditional obligation to teach students
how to think critically, how to make a connection between self-knowledge
and broader social issues, how to take risks and how to develop a sense of
social responsibility. Turning its back on public interest, the academy has
largely opened its doors to serving private market interests and in doing so
has compromised its role as a democratic public sphere (Furedi 2006). This
is very dangerous because the cultural role of the university is strongly
linked with the condition of democracy in the society. Democracy cannot
work, if citizens are not autonomous, self-reflective, critical and indepen-
dent – these are qualities which people should acquire at the university, and
which are indispensable for citizens and students, if they are going to make
vital judgments and choice about participating in and shaping decisions
that affect everyday life, institutional reforms and governmental policies.
From our point of view, introducing both internal (at the university)
and external (in the society and culture) changes is connected with acquir-
ing knowledge by students and academics, which is possible through
critical dialogue with texts and authorities. Through the reflexive and
critical communication people are able to develop cultural competences,
which are necessary to establish a civic attitude to acting in the society. But
the process of critical interpretation in communicative action cannot be
structured, if we want it to have a potential to bring about change; people
must be autonomous in making interpretations in order to be able to
develop communicative and critical skills (Rorty 1989).
Learning by experiencing requires deliberative communication in
which different opinions and values face one another, and where care is
taken to acknowledge each individual holding some position – by listen-
ing, deliberating, seeking arguments and evaluating others – while at the
same time making a common effort to articulate values and norms which
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE FUTURE OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 7

everyone could agree with (Habermas 1985). Communication in educa-

tional processes must be based on the possibility to constructively use the
power of argument. While such a possibility is potentially associated with
questioning authorities, it also entails due respect for them and for all
other interlocutors as well. The key seems to be to render the vision of an
authority (teacher, author) as someone who is worth discussing with –
without imitating – embedded in the teaching process.
We need to return to the true meaning of education as paideia: to
recreate the true desire for knowledge and true interaction with knowl-
edge, which can empower the human. Knowledge arises from profoundly
salient personal experience with text and a systematic deliberative dialogue
with other people – this is what makes up the contents of symbolic culture
allowing insight into the complexity of the reality, the development of
critical reflection, imagination and a sense of quality. Knowledge facilitates
the development of symbolic capital and makes critical intervention in
social reality possible, while the level of knowledge capital – and not the
position occupied in social structures with their pecking orders – deter-
mines one’s elitist status. Preparing people to be the cultural elite and not
a social cluster of careerists and philistines is one of the main tasks of the
university. The quality of this task’s fulfilment determines the level of
democratization of the public sphere.

STATE OF PLAY
Recently, much has been said about the crisis, or indeed the fall, of the
university as a profession, idea and social institution (e.g. Ritzer 1993;
Schuster and Finkelstein 2008; Nussbaum 2010; Ginsberg 2011; Collini
2012). Universities used to be sites of dissent, civil courage and societal
conscience but have now instead become pseudo-businesses.

Under casino capitalism, higher education matters only to the extent that it
promotes national prosperity and drives economic growth, innovation, and
transformation. But there is more at stake here in turning the university into
an adjunct of the corporation, there is also an attempt to remove it as one of
the few remaining institutions left in which dissent, critical dialogue, and
social problems can be critically engaged. (Giroux 2011)

Instead of raising awareness, academics have turned into fierce rivalling

individuals, seeking grants, increasingly disconnected from other
8 M. IZAK ET AL.

academics and from any sense of wider obligation or professional commu-

nity (Morgan and Havergal 2015). Academic freedoms have been more or
less completely abolished in Western Europe and the US and are now
undergoing the same process in other parts of the world. Research is being
increasingly subordinated to the interests of grant-givers. Systems of
tenure that used to guarantee a security of employment that could result
in vocal expression of social criticism are becoming eroded and in some US
staftes even legally outlawed (Giroux 2011). Students, who once used to
be the driving force of all social change, on the first lines whenever and
wherever there were demonstrations, social movements, revolts, are nowa-
days a rather passive and puzzled crowd, burdened with a future of likely
unemployment and gigantic debts:

Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are
unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system
of debt, they can’t afford the time to think. Tuition fee increases are a
disciplinary technique, and, by the time students graduate, they are not
only loaded with debt, but have also internalized the disciplinarian culture.
(Chomsky 2011)

George Ritzer coined in 1993 the term “McUniversity” to refer to the

emerging depersonalized, business-like and mechanistic provider of higher
education, which was increasingly replacing the traditional university, erod-
ing academic ethos and professional judgement. It offers mass education on a
mass market and produces quantifiable and predictable research. Knowledge
is now considered to be a resource, to be bought and sold, measured,
submitted to systems of ranking and accreditation and efficiency-oriented
streamlining and impersonal control (Ritzer 1993). Higher education today
fails to “cultivate the capacities for critical thinking and engaged citizenship”
(Giroux 2011). The discourse about measures and measurability has replaced
the conversation able to voice social concerns about “good education”
(Biesta 2010). The “banking model” (Freire 2000) of education, where
prepackaged knowledge is disposed into the students minds for storage as
an “investment” has conquered the world. And, unsurprisingly, universities
fail at this strategy, they do not fulfil the financial or vocational aims that they
promise and they are just not adapted to performing such a social and
economic role (Collini 2012).
Stefan Collini, in his much cited book What Are Universities For?
(2012), argues that universities still have different missions and aims
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE FUTURE OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 9

than those officially upheld and advertised in terms of investment and

realization of concrete political and social ends such as decreasing of
unemployment. And yet, whatever universities are today, their social
impact remains stronger than ever – they are replacing factories in their
role as largest single employers and the “fulcrum of society, the institution
on which society pivoted” (Haiven and Khasnabish 2014, p. 38). They are
today’s “key of struggle” (Haiven and Khasnabish 2014, p. 36) and thus,
for anyone interested in the future of society, they present both a theme
and the site for discussions about where we, humanity, are collectively
heading. Even though diminished, eroded and changed beyond recogni-
tion, universities are still sites of pleasure and resistance (Berg and Seeber
2016), if not on the surface and within the official institutional frames,
then as nomadic underground spaces, alive with lines of flight (Deleuze
and Guattari 2004) which academics, old as new, open and use. “The line
of flight is a deterritorialization” (Deleuze and Parnet 1987, p. 36), a line
of disruption: creation and change, a radical critique and a revolution,
beyond the taken for granted spaces that are subject to defining control.
Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber’s delightful book, The Slow Professor
(2016), remind academics of who we are, of why we entered this particular
path of life, “uncovering the secret life of the academic, revealing not only
her pains but also her pleasures (2016, p. 12).
The university is both there and not there; an institution profoundly
immersed in wider global processes, which, at the moment, can perhaps
best be described as intensely uncertain. This book focuses on one area of
this crises’ consequences – that of higher education. Zygmunt Bauman
proposes that this phase of the already greatly unstable liquid modernity
(2000) can best be described as an Interregnum (2012). He adopts
Antonio Gramsci’s metaphorical expression to depict a society where the
old systems and institutions have ceased working, the old order has already
collapsed, but no new order is yet at place. This is a moment of not only
extraordinary insecurity but also possibility: new ideas which may have
seemed absurd or impossible under the old order can now be at least
tasted, discussed and tested against a completely unknown future.
What will it bring us? To some degree, it may depend on the current
quality of our conversations. Max Haiven and Alex Khasnabish (2014)
suggest that we use radical imagination to envisage the research of the
university of a post-capitalist future. This book proposes to explore, by
radical imagination and dialogue, the possible future of higher education
in a post-interregnum society. Some of the contributing authors believe
10 M. IZAK ET AL.

that a post-capitalist state will emerge, whereas others envision a kind of

reformed, democratized and enlightened capitalism. All see a place for
universities as providers of higher education, but not as a continuation of
the current tendencies. Most also would not like to see a return of the pre-
liquid university, based on hierarchy and solid modern (Bauman 2000)
reproduction of systems of privilege and rank, such as patriarchy and class
structure. All, in their own ways, discuss the manners of embracing this
shift, whether they perceive it as imminent, imperative or both.

STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

The chapters adopt different styles of writing, from realistic to poetical.
Such a hybrid structure is not only one of the book’s unique traits, but
also a manifesto in itself: the book is an expression of all the contribu-
tors’ faith in more dynamic times yet to come, after the bleak era of the
interregnum. In dynamic times hybrids, explorers of borderline realities
are very much appreciated, because they bring challenge, amusement
and hope. In harsh times, the choices seem, for most people and
organizations, to be limited to avoiding the greater evil. Such times
are binary and there is no place for hybrids. In the best case, they are
unseen. Hybrids are rare, never form mainstreams, and are not very
visible. Cultural and social blends, genre fluidity, the ambivalent,
ambiguous and fluctuating inspire and provoke, wake up the mind to
think and imagination to flow. Thus, while being marginal themselves
they induce the emergence of ideas that form larger streams, some of
which become main. Hybrids also are an accurate barometer of the
times. The day when hybrids are welcome and visible again will mark
the end of the interregnum, which is detrimental towards diversity and
abundance, which make creativity and renewal possible.
The questions that the chapters take up concern themes that all of the
contributors find pertinent and of great importance. What is the role of
the university going to be after neoliberalism and liquid modernity?
What kind of place in society (if any) will it have? What and whom will it
educate – and who will be doing the educating? What is the relationship
between research and teaching going to be? Between training for a job/
profession and studying? Is academia going to, once again, become a free
profession or is there no way out of work alienation? What is the role of
the university in the context of change and emancipation? When the
interregnum is over, who will be needing universities and for what aims?
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE FUTURE OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 11

The book consists of 15 chapters grouped according to 4 broader

themes: “Dissecting the Status Quo”, “University in Context”, “Teaching
and Research”, and “Into the Future”. Without delimiting the richness of
content of each of the chapters, which in line with our request for con-
tributions often indeed span between categories, we hope that such group-
ing enables the reader to easily identify the pivotal area where the
contribution is made. The book is a tale, a collectively told story, which is
why we have chosen to base its structure on narrative logic. The chapters are
organized around a plot, or, in Aristotelian terms (2006), a whole consist-
ing of three parts: beginning, middle and end. Barbara Czarniawska (1997)
adds that “plot is the basic means by which specific events, otherwise
represented as lists or chronicles, are brought into one meaningful whole”
(p. 18). There is a fundamental uncertainty in our collective tale, a radical
discontinuity between the past and the future creating suspense within it.
We have accentuated the suspended “middle” of the plot by splitting it into
two parts, in which we are looking for ideas and possibilities of a resolution
on the outside, as well as the inside of the academy.
The four opening chapters “dissect the Status Quo” in their own respec-
tive ways. Carl Rhodes makes a powerful argument for academic freedom
and how it can be reclaimed. Managerialism and the idea that humans
should always engage in competitive individualism has turned universities
around the world into businesses: something very distant from the academic
ideal. In order not to lose its meaning and sense of existence, academics
need to accept responsibility for academic freedom and fight for it, so as not
to squander our inheritance. Krystian Szadkowski’s text discusses contra-
dictions that afflict higher education sector subsumed under capital. The
author employs Marxist critique to argue that the capital should be con-
sidered as a pole of coordination of the higher education sector. Michał
Zawadzki explores the relation between performance management ideology
at the Polish university and the dignity of junior academics and doctoral
students. Using his research findings the author examines how neoliberal
reforms of the university affect the academic dignity, which is dependent on
the autonomy, freedom, and discursive and deliberative communication, as
well as space for resistance and non-conformity, among others. Łukasz
Sułkowski presents his critique of the neoliberal style of university manage-
ment, which is strongly connected with an audit culture. “Point scoring
obsession”, “culture of control”, “productivity” or “accountability” are the
examples of the modern nomenclature in the contemporary, corporate
university. Do we have and need a third way in developing contemporary
12 M. IZAK ET AL.

university, which might overcome negative factors connected with neolib-

eral and Humboldt models?
The second theme is focused on providing the wider context in which
discussion on the future of the university education unfolds. Thus,
Carmelo Mazza and Paolo Quattrone reflect on the homo oeconomicus
as a prevalent idea shaping contemporary work at the university. From the
author’s point of view, the current neoliberal narration in the higher
education involving such terms as “efficiency”, “cost cutting” or “quality
control” is a kind of fairy tale, which must be deemed dangerous. Anna
Kola and Krzysztof Leja consider the possibility of a “third way” in the
development of universities, neither going along with tendencies of neo-
liberalization, nor steering universities back into a feudal past. They call for
a bottom-up approach, based on initiatives coming from the inside of the
academic community. The chapter presents a study of the Polish social
movement Obywatele Nauki (the Citizens of Science), uniting of young as
well older activists, working for the common good and the good of the
university seen as an important social institution. Krzysztof Nawratek takes
up urban development as theme and, based on his pedagogical experience
from the Silesia region of Poland, proposes an inclusive approach to
campus planning. A university space, excluded from thinking in terms of
profit, but instead focusing on human needs and values, should bring
people closer together and allow space for social experiments, testing the
possibility for a post-capitalist future.
In “Teaching and Research” section, Roy Stager Jacques offers a well-
considered exploration of “Mclearning” – a fast food-inspired educational
model – attempting to better understand its origins and assumptions, as well
as, without downright rejecting it, taking an issue with its totalizing and
dangerous aspects. Among others, he ponders its applicability in the uni-
versity context, emphasizes the issue of shared responsibility for its existence
and points towards professoriate as potential agent of change. Henry
Giroux’ chapter addresses economic, social and cultural threats to higher
education and calls to defending this public good against neoliberal
attempts to perceiving it in purely economic and pragmatic terms, poten-
tially leading to moral and agentic impoverishment of future generations. In
this vein, he exhorts to embrace pedagogy of wakefulness: creating space for
critical thinking, informed interpretation, and entailing possibility of inter-
vention in the world. In another radical twist, Hugo Gaggiotti, Peter
Simpson and Svetlana Cicmil, propose to re-examine the institutionalized
realities of business schools in terms of both their role and practice. They
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE FUTURE OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 13

propose to transform business schools into places of theorizing, able to

critically reflect on existing dominant epistemologies in management edu-
cation and keen to produce theoretically informed meanings, rather than re-
produce neoliberal discourses on business and management. David Sims’
chapter argues that teaching and research cannot be separated, that they are,
in fact, complementary activities, each of which declines if not accompanied
by the other. The current times bring a loss of meaning in several areas of
social life, including academia. Atomistic modes of thinking lead to splitting
apart of things that should not be separated and create pathologies such as
narcissism and a failure to create learning communities.
Finally, the remaining four chapters discuss distinctive future scenarios
offering insights regarding theoretical, sociopolitical and technological
trajectories of development. Roger Hallam’s chapter is a bold statement
in favour of change. On the basis of astute critical analysis of the current
dynamics in the area of higher education, he proposes an outline for a
radical reformulation of university as an institution towards “digital com-
munism”: an inherently co-operative project, eluding traditional economic
and (despite its name) political distinctions, and conceptually drawing from
the heritage of social institutions traditionally occupying the fringes of the
social system. Todd Hannula, a highly original voice, uses his experiences as
reflexive management practitioner to explore the following key elements:
curation, technology, distribution and teams, and predicts the future uni-
versity to be based on the idea of distributed education. Not location, but
the human being and his or her creativity will be the focus of such higher
education. George Cairns presents his own conjectures regarding the state
of the university in the year 2025, using critical framework to analyse the
factors, which might determine the future form of academia. In doing so,
he identifies the key determinants responsible for bringing universities to
where they are now. Monika Kostera’s chapter is an exploration of the
domain imagination of various contributors and specifically to how they
envisage the future of the university. This text is based on a study carried
out as a narrative collage, i.e. a method focused explicitly on investigating
imaginary spaces. The contributors were asked to write short fiction taking
place in the future in a campus setting. The stories were collected, inter-
preted and made sense of by the author.
We envisage that this varied collection of texts, going well beyond
stating the facts or providing ready-made recipes, will generate momen-
tum for further discussion on the future of university education, and,
potentially, will became a small contribution towards change.
14 M. IZAK ET AL.

NOTE
1. In the Arabic part of the world the first educational institutions, madrasas,
were also founded as early as in the mid ninth century.

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Ginsberg, B. (2011). The fall of the faculty. Oxford: OUP.
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Habermas, J. (1985). The theory of communicative action (Vol. 1 and Vol. 2).
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McLaren, P. (2002). Critical pedagogy and predatory culture. Oppositional politics
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Michał Izak, PhD, is a senior lecturer in management at the University of

Lincoln, UK. His research interests include emerging organizational discourses,
critical management studies, fiction as a reflection of organizational dynamics and
organizational storytelling. He publishes regularly in peer-reviewed journals, and is
a member of the editorial board of Organization Studies and Management
Learning, as well as a guest editor of high-ranked journals and co-organizer of
many international conferences.

Monika Kostera is Professor Ordinaria and Chair of Management at the

Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, as well as Professor and Chair in
16 M. IZAK ET AL.

Management at the Durham University, UK, and Guest Professor at Linnaeus

University, Sweden. She holds several visiting professorships. She has authored and
edited over 35 books in Polish and English, including her last book, Management
in a Liquid Modern World with Zygmunt Bauman, Irena Bauman and Jerzy
Kociatkiewicz (Polity), as well as a number of articles published in journals includ-
ing Organization Studies, Journal of Organizational Behavior Management and
British Journal of Management. She is associate editor of Management Learning
and is serving on several editorial boards. Her current research interests include
archetypes, narrative organization studies, ethnography and the humanistic turn in
management. Her website is: www.kostera.pl.

Michał Zawadzki, PhD, works at the Institute of Culture at the Faculty of

Management and Social Communication, Jagiellonian University, Cracow. He
has authored several books, articles and book chapters which occupy a range of
topics within the area of humanistic management, especially critical management
studies. He is a Visby Program scholar (Gothenburg Research Institute).
 PART I

Dissecting the Status Quo

Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
Empress had left Havana for Galveston, a new schedule having gone
into effect.
“The captain will see his brother this voyage,” thought Roy. “It will
be a happy trip for him.”
He tried to reach the Empress, but call as he would, he could get no
response. He talked with a number of shore stations, but there
seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary to report. The sea was not
very rough and the chances of getting nicely through the Straits
seemed good. Yet Roy could not help feeling apprehensive and
depressed. He knew the Gulf was in a tumult off Havana. Could he
have seen the barometer and the sober face of Captain Lansford,
who had now taken command, he would have known there was
good cause to feel apprehensive.
Just when the storm struck the Lycoming, Roy never knew. Hour
after hour he stuck to the wireless house, now listening in, now
calling, calling for ships he knew ought to be within call, but which
he could not reach. So intent was Roy upon his work that he did not
hear the rising wind or notice the increasing violence of the waves,
until suddenly the Lycoming staggered and heeled far over. The
sudden lurch almost threw Roy out of his chair.
He pulled off his receivers and was instantly aware that the wind
was shrieking about the wireless house with terrific force. The
windows rattled, the door creaked under its pressure, and the entire
superstructure of the ship seemed to shiver. He could hear the
groaning of masts and derricks, of life-boats and rafts lashed to the
deck, of a hundred objects here and there. He thanked providence
the mate had had things made fast. The roll of the rain on the roof
was like thunder. When Roy rose to his feet he found he could not
stand without holding to something. At once he knew he had never
been in such a storm as this. But it was not until he opened the door
of the wireless house that he understood how violent the storm
really was. The instant he turned the latch the door flew inward,
striking him with great force. The wind rushed in with a deafening
shriek and almost flung him on the floor. The rain beat in in torrents.
The roar of the elements was beyond description. It was a deafening
welter of sound. Like demons howling in agony the winds roared and
shrieked. The rain beat a terrific monotone on deck and roof. The
crests of the waves broke before the wind with a hissing roar like the
thunder of a thousand Niagaras. The rigging rattled. Woodwork
everywhere creaked and groaned. Stays and guy lines beat a very
devil’s tattoo under the awful blasts. All about him, papers,
despatches, records, clothes, were whirling like dust before a
swirling wind. With all his might Roy strove to shut the door. He was
not able to do it. Then an awful lurch of the ship flung the door
violently shut and threw Roy against the opposite wall. His chair flew
across the room with a crash. The remainder of the furniture was
fastened to the floor.
Roy picked himself up, righted his chair, and attempted to collect the
articles scattered by the wind. Now he realized how the sea had
risen. Down, down, down, the ship seemed to go. It lifted as
suddenly, sending Roy staggering against the wall. Now it lurched
this way, now that. Never had he supposed a great ship could be
pitched about as the Lycoming now was. Far to one side it tilted. As
suddenly it shot far to the other side. Then it pitched forward. Now it
seemed as though it was trying to stand on its stern. Suddenly it
dipped sidewise, falling, falling, until Roy cried out in very fear. He
was sure the ship was turning over. Nor was his the only heart that
stood still with terror. White-faced the man in the pilot-house clung
to his wheel.
“Great God!” he muttered. “A sixty-degree roll,” and waited
breathless, like Roy, for the ship to right itself.
Down in the stewards’ quarters the negroes were gathered together
with blanched faces, some praying, some moaning. Amid all this
welter of wind and wave, Captain Lansford stood on the bridge,
holding to the rail like grim death, the rain falling on his oilskins in
torrents, the blasts tearing at his garments, as he peered through
the blinding spray and listened to the tumult of the tempest,
unmoved, immovable, a man of iron with a heart of steel, grappling
with a tempest.
It was the thought of the captain that brought courage back to Roy.
As the Lycoming hung for what seemed an age at that terrifying
angle, Roy lost his grip on himself. For perhaps the first time in his
life, he felt physical terror. An awful fear gripped his soul. His heart
actually stopped beating. The blood rushed from his cheeks till they
were like chalk. He seemed paralyzed. He could not even cry out. He
was completely unmanned. Death was so near at hand and the
thought of it came so suddenly that it overpowered him. Then Roy
thought of the captain. He knew he was out on the bridge. He knew
he was facing the awful wind, the driving rain, the blinding spray,
the danger of being washed overboard, and that there he would
stand, hour after hour defying death and the elements to bring the
Lycoming safe to port.
“Thank God for Captain Lansford!” cried Roy. “He’ll win through. He’ll
bring us safe to port. He’s never failed yet. He won’t fail now. Thank
God, Captain Lansford is in command.”
The color flew back into Roy’s cheeks. His heart began to pound
bravely. His pulses beat with courage.
“We’ve got to help him, every one of us!” he cried aloud. “What can
I do? What can I do?”
A still, small voice answered, “Your duty.”
“My duty,” said Roy aloud, “is right at that instrument. That’s my
post as long as this storm lasts.”
He shoved his chair across the room, sat down at his desk, and
clamped the receivers to his ears. He was just in time to catch a
message. The United States Weather Bureau at New Orleans, seven
hundred miles away, was sending out a storm warning to Louisiana
coast towns and other places along the Gulf which the hurricane had
not yet reached. “Tropical disturbance in southeastern Gulf moving
northwest will cause increasing northeast winds.”
According to rule, Roy jotted down the time the message was
received. It was just ten o’clock.
“I wonder if I should give this to the captain,” said Roy, with a grin.
“He might like to know there’s going to be a storm.”
Then his face became sober enough and he settled to work. For long
periods he listened for voices in the storm. Again and again he
flashed out messages to ships that he thought should be near, but
he could reach nobody. After a time he got an answer from the
Comal, with which he had talked before. She was still fast to her
moorings in Key West, but in imminent danger of being torn away.
Even as Roy talked to her it happened.
“We’re loose,” flashed her operator to Roy, “and blowing ashore. I’ve
got to stand by to send messages for the skipper. Good-bye. Good
luck to you.”
There were tears in Roy’s eyes as he jotted down the message.
“Wishing us good luck while he’s going perhaps to his death,”
muttered Roy. “He’s a man—as every wireless operator ought to be.”
And while he listened for other signals, he sent up a silent prayer
that when the pinch came he would be equally brave.
Meantime the ship staggered on. With the stars blotted out, with the
seas mounting higher and higher, with the wind blowing at hurricane
force, it was impossible to tell what speed the ship was making,
whether she was being blown far from her course, or where she
was. Yet the captain must decide all these things and decide them
right, if the Lycoming was to come through the storm in safety. The
most hazardous part of her journey still lay ahead of her. It would be
doubly hazardous now because the wind would be abeam when she
turned west to pass through the Straits.
In the early hours of the morning the motion of the ship seemed to
alter. For Roy, on the very top of the vessel, every movement was
intensified. At once he was conscious of this altered motion. Before,
her movements had been mostly violent forward plunges. Now she
rolled fearfully from side to side. First she rolled far over to port.
Then she dipped at a terrifying angle to starboard. Roy could not
understand it. After a time it came to him that the ship was
wallowing in the trough of the waves. Had something gone wrong?
Had the steering-gear broken? Was the ship out of control and
drifting toward land, even as the Comal had done? These and a
hundred other questions Roy asked himself as he sat breathless at
his operating table. Should he call the bridge to see if the captain
wanted the SOS sounded? Small chance they would have of getting
help in such a storm, Roy told himself, when it was all any ship could
do to keep herself afloat, let alone help another. All the while Roy
was conscious of the regular vibration of the ship’s engines.
Presently it occurred to him that if the ship were unmanageable the
engines would probably be stopped. Then he knew what was wrong.
The ship had turned west. They were in the Straits. The waves were
catching the Lycoming abeam. The pinch had come. Could the
Lycoming survive it?
Hardly had Roy asked himself the question before there was an
awful roar. With a noise like a thousand thunders a mighty sea
struck the Lycoming broadside and poured over her decks. It was
the first sea that had come aboard. By intuition Roy knew what had
happened. His thoughts reverted to the day when he had expressed
surprise, almost incredulity, at the purser’s statement that waves
sometimes swept the deck. Thirty feet, the purser had said the
waves sometimes rose. He wondered how high this one was. He
knew it was a monster. He wondered what the sea looked like with
waves like that. He wished it were day so he could see. Then he was
glad it was not day. He was afraid he would be afraid. Whatever
happened, he did not want to be a coward. The thought of the
captain on the bridge heartened him. It was wonderful how the bare
thought of that fearless man restored Roy’s courage.
On and on plunged the Lycoming, ploughing through cross-seas,
wallowing between mighty waves, fighting her way through a welter
of water such as Roy had never dreamed of. Hour by hour, the force
of the wind increased. The seas mounted higher. The ship labored
more heavily. Time and again great waves swept over her. Her
bulwarks were smashed. Railings and woodwork were torn away.
Iron stanchions were bent like wire. The bridge was battered. The
waters clawed at her hull and the winds tore at her superstructure.
But unflinching, unyielding, undaunted, gripping the rail with grasp
of iron, the captain stood on the bridge, master of wave and wind.
Never had Roy welcomed daylight as he welcomed the dawn next
morning. All night long he had sat at his instrument, waiting,
waiting, waiting for the moment when he might be needed. A
hundred times he had pictured the sea to himself; but his wildest
picture was tame in comparison with the actual scene as revealed by
the light of dawn. The confusion of the waters was beyond
conception. Mountain high the seas were piling up. Under the awful
blasts of wind they rushed forward like frenzied demons, frothing,
seething, hissing, roaring, climbing up and up until the hurricane
tore their tops away, flinging the spray like tropic rain in blinding
sheets. Again and again Roy watched with bated breath as a
monster wave bore down on the ship, rising higher and higher, until
it plunged forward on the Lycoming with a crash, shaking the sturdy
ship from stem to stern. The roar of the elements was deafening.
Beyond all power of imagination, the tempest was awful.
Hour by hour the stanch vessel fought her way through the
maelstrom. The wind tended ever to blow her toward the keys and
shoals that menaced on the north, but the man on the bridge kept
pointing her into the wind. No land was visible. Neither was the sun.
It was impossible to take a reckoning and determine the ship’s
position. Yet with that instinct born of years of experience, the
captain allowed for the drift, gauged the ship’s speed, and kept her
on her course. Noon should normally have seen her far past the Dry
Tortugas. It was hours later when the Lycoming actually reached
them. For a few minutes the rain ceased and the air cleared. Again
and again the man on the bridge swept the horizon with his glasses.
Finally he glimpsed land. That one glance told him all he wanted to
know. He had seen a landmark on the Dry Tortugas. He knew he
was only slightly off his course. At once he rectified his position. The
wide Gulf was now before him and, barring accident, he knew he
should come through safely. But he was traveling with the hurricane.
He did not run through it, but advanced with it. So the storm
continued hour after hour without abatement.
Late in the day, Roy sought food. If he had thought the storm
terrible, within the shelter of the wireless house, he had no words to
describe it now as he stood in the open, exposed to the elements.
Clutching the rail with all his strength, bending low before the gale,
Roy advanced foot by foot. He was almost afraid to go down the
ladder lest he be pitched headlong into the hissing seas. A step at a
time he descended, hugging the ladder tenaciously. Then, crouching
close to the superstructure of the ship, he fought his way against an
awful wind until he reached a door. In another second he was inside,
trembling all over from the violence of his efforts and his close
contact with the storm. When he remembered that for twenty hours
the captain had stood on the bridge, facing that awful wind and
those crashing seas, he was speechless with admiration. It was more
than admiration. It was almost worship. A burning desire came into
his heart to do something in return for the captain.
Roy got some food and the steward provided him with a little bag of
provisions so that he need not leave the wireless house again until
the storm was over. Then Roy crept back up the ladder and flung
himself on his bed.
He slept for hours. During that time the ship staggered on. All day
and all night the hurricane raged, and all the next day and the next
night. For forty-eight hours Captain Lansford never left the bridge.
Then, utterly exhausted, he staggered to his cabin and dropped
asleep, while Mr. Young took command. For twenty-four hours the
captain lay like one dead. Then he returned to the bridge and again
took command. During all that time the storm continued without
abatement. The seas climbed higher every hour under the terrific
lashing of the tempest.
Roy spent long hours at his post. Indeed, he hardly laid aside his
receivers except when he snatched a little sleep. He got into touch
with the Comal again and learned that she had been beached by the
wind, but that no one was hurt. The British oil tanker Tonawanda
had been scuttled to save the Comal. The steamer Grampus and the
schooner E. V. Drew had gone down in the harbor, while Key West
itself was prostrated. Three hundred and twenty houses, together
with stores, churches, and other buildings had been demolished. The
wind had reached a velocity of 110 miles an hour. From other
stations Roy learned of other damage. The town of Gould was
virtually razed. The wireless station at Fort Taylor was wrecked.
Towns all along the eastern Gulf shore were badly damaged by the
awful wind. When Roy learned that the Valbanera had gone down
with all on board, his face was very sober indeed. But for Captain
Lansford, thought Roy, the Lycoming, too, might now be somewhere
on the bottom of the Gulf.
Another day passed. The hurricane blew with undiminished force.
With every hour of wind the seas grew higher. But the Lycoming
weathered both wind and wave. She was drawing near her
destination. Her harbor was not many hours distant. But could she
make it? Would she dare try to run between those walls of stone in
such a sea? Would she not have to put back into the open Gulf, like
the Valbanera, and try to ride out the storm? These and a hundred
other questions Roy asked himself when he realized that the
Lycoming was drawing near to Galveston. Then he thought of the
sea-wall and felt thankful it was there. If the Lycoming had
withstood the tempest, he felt sure the sea-wall had, too. He
shuddered to think what would have happened had there been no
sea-wall.
All the time Roy was working with his instruments, trying to pick up
news, listening for voices in the air. Again and again he had tried to
get into touch with Galveston, but in vain. It was not until the middle
of the afternoon that he finally reached the Marconi man there. It
was late Saturday afternoon. The Galveston operator said the storm
was then at its worst. The sea was beating furiously at the sea-wall.
The wind was blowing nearly seventy miles an hour. The barometer
was way below thirty. But the city was safe. He did not believe it
would be wise to attempt to enter the harbor with such a sea
running.
“Another night of it,” groaned Roy to himself, as the Galveston man
flashed good-bye. “I hope I never see another storm like this. I’ll
have to give this news to the captain.”
Roy laid aside his receivers and picked up his telephone. His signal
was answered by the captain.
“Galveston man says storm at its height there now,” telephoned Roy.
“Does not think it safe to try to enter harbor. Seventy-mile wind
blowing.”
There was no reply. The captain had turned away from the
telephone in anger. He was the judge of whether to enter the harbor
or not, and not some landlubber sitting where he couldn’t even see
the water.
Roy adjusted his receivers again. Hardly were they in place before a
sound crackled in his ears, “SOS—SOS—SOS.”
It galvanized Roy into action. The blood surged through his heart.
With eager, trembling fingers he flung back a reply.
“Who are you? I have your signal of distress.”
For what seemed an age he waited for an answer. Outside, the wind
was howling like a pack of demons. The wireless house shook and
trembled under its awful blasts. The ship plunged from side to side.
Roy clung to his table as he sat, tense and rigid, waiting for a reply.
“Who are you?” he flashed again. “I have your signal of distress.”
Again he waited. Would the wireless play him false at such a critical
minute? Were the atmospherics to trick him again?
Then it came. “Steamer Empress, Rudder broken. Drifting helpless.”
“Where are you?” flashed back Roy. “What is your latitude and
longitude?”
Crash! Bang! A terrible sea swept over the Lycoming. She heeled far
over. Something had given way. Something was wrong with his
wireless. Trembling, Roy ran to his door and peered out. His aerial
was gone. It might take hours perhaps to rig a new one, even if he
could get it up in the gale. What should he do? He must get the
Empress’ reply. Roy leaped to the deck. The broken lead-in wire was
whipping in the wind. Quick as thought, he snatched it up and ran
back into the wireless house with it. He scraped the insulation from
the broken end and dived under his couch. In a second he had
attached the end of the wire to the couch spring. In another he was
back at his table, receivers clamped to his head. Tense, breathless,
rigid, he listened. Would it work? Could he hear?
Then it came. “Latitude 28. Longitude 96.”
That was all he needed. Throwing his receivers aside, Roy picked up
his telephone. Again he signaled the bridge. There was no response.
He signaled sharply. No answer came. Again and again Roy tried to
get the captain. The telephone was silent. Either it had been broken
or the captain had been washed away by the awful sea that had
struck the ship. In either case there was nothing to do but take the
message to the bridge himself. Roy leaped to his feet and ran out of
the wireless house, utterly forgetful of wind and wave. Slipping,
scrambling, clutching rails and stanchions, Roy fought his way
forward. There was but one thought in his mind—to get the news to
the captain. The latter was still at his post, though the bridge rail
was partly gone and the wheel-house was stove in. The telephone
apparatus was smashed beyond recognition. Putting his mouth to
the captain’s ear, Roy shouted, “Steamer Empress drifting with
broken rudder. Latitude 28; longitude 96.”
The captain looked at him incredulously.
“She left Havana before her usual time,” shouted Roy. “New
schedule.”
For a single instant Captain Lansford bent his piercing eyes on Roy.
“Stand by to send a message,” he roared. Then he sprang for the
chart house.
 CHAPTER XVI
LATITUDE 28—LONGITUDE 96

R oy rushed after him. “My aerial has carried away, sir,” he

shouted. “I cannot send a message until it is repaired.”
“Fix it,” bellowed the captain, turning to his charts.
Roy fought his way back to the wireless house, pausing on the way
to appraise the damage. The aerial was entirely gone, spreaders and
all. Fortunately the halyards that held them aloft were intact. Roy
hurried on to the wireless house. His closet was full of repair
material. He got out two spreaders, a coil of wire, some insulators,
and other needed materials. With remarkable celerity he attached
his wires to the spreader, united them to a new lead-in wire and
spliced them to what was left of the old wire. It was almost dark by
the time he finished his repairs. When all was ready, he struggled
out with his new aerial, and bent it to the halyards. In a few
moments it was swinging aloft. Roy watched it for a minute as the
tempest tore at it, to see if it would hold. Nothing gave way.
The captain, meantime, had snatched up a chart. “Latitude 28,
longitude 96,” he repeated, as he ran his finger over the chart. His
ruddy face whitened as he found the spot. “Only thirty-five miles off
a lee shore,” he muttered, “and one hundred and thirty miles from
here. Can I get to him in time?”
He turned to the man at the wheel and laid a new course for him.
Then he sprang to a speaking-tube and ordered the chief engineer
to crowd on every ounce of steam he could make. As the steersman
swung the Lycoming to her new course she heeled far over. Then
she righted and rode more steadily than before. The tempest had
changed from northwest to west and the Lycoming was racing along
almost with it. Though not directly astern, waves and wind were
both driving the Lycoming forward. Soon she was tearing through
the water at a rate she had never known before. Her very speed
steadied her.
Roy, meantime, had rushed into the wireless house to test his
apparatus. It appeared to work perfectly. Satisfied, he battled his
way to the bridge again and reported to the captain.
“The damage is repaired, sir.”
The captain showed him the positions on the chart. “Tell Charley
we’re coming,” he roared. “Find out just where he is, how he got
there, and what he’s doing.”
Roy left the bridge and faced toward the wireless house. Now he
was heading almost straight into the wind. It seemed to him the
tempest was worse than ever. He could not advance a step.
Desperately he clung to a stanchion. He dared not try to walk across
the few feet of deck to the hand-rail on the superstructure lest he be
picked up bodily and flung into the sea. He dropped to his knees,
and fairly hugging the deck, crept fearfully over to the rail. There he
was partly sheltered from the direct blasts. Crouching low and
pulling himself along with arms and feet, he fought his way to the
wireless house. It did not seem possible that a wind could be so
terrible.
Roy adjusted his receivers, threw over his switch, and sent the
Empress’ call signal flashing forth. “KKK—KKK—KKK de WNA.”
Then he waited anxiously. Would he get a reply, or would the
atmospherics trick him again? At one hundred and thirty miles’
distance he ought to communicate with the Empress easily. He was
not long in suspense. Promptly a wireless signal buzzed in his ears.
“WNA de KKK. Have been calling you steadily.”
“KKK de WNA,” flashed back Roy. “My aerial carried away. Got your
position all right. Tell your captain the Lycoming is rushing to help
you. We are a few hours east of Galveston and one hundred and
thirty miles from the position you signaled. We must be making
twenty knots an hour. Should reach you in five to six hours. Keep us
informed of your position. Are you all right? How did you get there?
What are you doing?”
“WNA de KKK,” came back the reply. “Empress reached Galveston
early this morning. Sea too rough to enter port. Headed into Gulf to
ride out storm. Broke rudder six hours ago. Drifted four hours, then
put down anchors, but dragging fast. Captain couldn’t get
observation. Position given obtained by dead-reckoning. Trying to
repair damage. Sea too high to do much. Ship all right so far. No
land in sight. Change in wind helpful. Blowing us toward shore at
long angle. Captain reckons six to eight hours before we ground.
Reckons we are dragging straight toward Corpus Christi.”
“KKK de WNA,” signaled back Roy. “Will report to captain. Will call
you every quarter hour. Good luck.”
Once more Roy made the perilous trip to the bridge. “Come inside,”
shouted the captain, dragging Roy within the wheel-house. Roy
delivered his message and the captain listened without comment.
“Any message, Captain?” asked Roy.
“No. Keep in close touch with them.”
“I have already arranged to call them every quarter hour.”
“Good. Go back to your post.”
“How shall I know if you want me?”
“I’ll send a messenger.”
Roy hurried from the wheel-house and vanished in the dark. Hour
after hour the Lycoming raced toward the Empress. The seas were
as mountainous and the winds as fierce as any the Lycoming had
encountered, but the ship was running with them and its passage
was less rough than it had been at any time since the tempest
struck her. Unable to see the waves any longer, Roy almost believed
that the storm was subsiding. Every quarter hour Roy called the
Empress. At each call he got back the same reply. The Empress was
battered but still safe. She was dragging her anchors. Every time
Roy talked to her, the signals seemed more distinct. There could be
no question that the Lycoming was getting nearer.
Four hours passed. A terrified darky cabin-boy crept into the wireless
house. “De cap’n say tell de Empress to show her search-light,” he
said.
Roy signaled the Empress, “Show your search-light.”
Back came the answer, “Search-light out of commission.”
“Tell the captain the Empress’ search-light is broken,” said Roy to the
young darky.
“Does I haf to go back to de cap’n, Mr. Mercer?” cried the colored
boy, shaking with fright.
“No,” said Roy, jumping to his feet. “Stay here,” and he disappeared
in the darkness.
“Tell ’em to burn lights and send up rockets every few minutes,”
ordered the captain, when Roy had delivered his message.
Roy regained the wireless house and signaled the Empress.
“We’ve been doing that for hours,” came back the reply. “Supply
almost exhausted.”
Again Roy had to fight his way to the bridge with the message. It
might be important for the captain to know about the lights.
Another hour passed. The Empress was not within sight. For half an
hour longer the captain held to his course. Then he headed the
Lycoming nearer shore. Another half hour passed. The Empress was
still invisible.
Then an able-bodied seaman appeared in the wireless house and
said, “The captain says to see if you can find out anything about the
location of the Empress, sir.”
Into Roy’s mind flashed the remembrance of the fog off Hatteras. He
had located the Merrimack in the fog. The captain must believe he
could also find the Empress by wireless. It was a great opportunity.
“Tell him I’ll try,” said Roy.
The seaman started for the bridge. Roy dropped his head in his
hands and began to think. How could he locate the Empress? A
direction finder such as they had in the search for the secret wireless
would do the trick at once. But he had no direction finder. Then Roy
remembered how the wireless patrol had improvised a direction
finder during the hunt for the dynamiters at Camp Brady. He had
helped make that instrument. He could make another. Before he
began, he decided to call up the Empress again. Hardly had he
adjusted his receivers before a signal crackled in his ears.
“WNA de KKK. Can see a search-light. Is it yours?”
“Will have the light swung in an arc three times. Watch,” flashed
back Roy.
The seaman had not returned, and again Roy had to go to the
bridge. “Swing the search-light overhead in an arc three times,”
shouted Roy. “The Empress thinks she sees us.” Then Roy added,
“Please send a seaman to carry messages for me.”
The great beam of light that had been boring into the darkness
ahead swung round to starboard, then slowly traveled in an arc
directly over the Lycoming until it came to rest on the seething
waters to port. Then it retraced its path. A third time it circled
overhead, lighting up the heavy canopy of clouds. Meantime Roy
had regained the wireless house. Trembling with eagerness, he
clamped his receivers to his ears and listened.
“WNA de KKK,” presently came a signal. “It’s your light. We saw it
swing overhead three times. Can see its beams now.”
“Get a compass bearing on it and signal me,” flashed Roy.
In a few minutes the answer came. “Almost due east.”
Roy sent the news to the captain. “She’s dragged more than I
thought possible,” muttered the captain as he entered the chart
house. Then, turning to the steersman, he ordered, “Starboard—
head her due west.”
Twenty minutes later lights flashed out directly ahead of the
Lycoming, then disappeared again. It was the Empress as she rose
and fell with the waves. She was only a few miles distant. A few
minutes later the Lycoming was close to her.
To Roy, watching from the wireless house, it did not seem humanly
possible that the Lycoming could assist the Empress. The latter lay
with her nose to the storm, rising and falling with the waves and
rolling violently. Roy could see two great anchor chains leading down
into the water. Most of the time the Empress rode the huge swells
buoyantly. But occasionally the crest of a great wave broke over her
and went rushing aft with an awful roar, smashing woodwork and
twisting iron. As the Lycoming’s search-light played on the Empress
Roy could see that her bulwarks and rails were smashed to pieces.
All but one of her small boats had carried away. Her life-rafts were
gone. Part of the railing about the bridge was smashed. To Roy she
seemed all but battered to pieces. To an experienced sailor like
Captain Lansford, she appeared to be in good shape. The ship
herself was intact.
How any earthly power could get lines aboard of her, or how it could
tow her in the teeth of such a gale, even if the lines were got
aboard, was more than Roy could understand. He did not believe it
possible. He did not believe any small boat could exist for one
minute in that raging sea. Yet he knew very well that Captain
Lansford intended to assist the Empress. What he would do Roy
could not conceive. All he could do was to watch and learn.
For some time Roy could not see that anything was being done. The
Lycoming reduced her speed, but kept steadily on past the Empress.
Then she began to swing around her in a wide arc. Roy believed the
captain meant to approach close to the ship from the leeward side.
But when the Lycoming continued to circle slowly around the
Empress, Roy was puzzled.
The Lycoming swung completely round the Empress, but not until
the circuit had been completed did Roy get an inkling of what the
captain was doing. The search-light played here and there, now
picking out the path of the Lycoming, now illuminating the Empress,
which tossed violently at the very centre of the huge circle the
Lycoming had just traced. To his intense surprise Roy saw that the
water within this circle was calming down. It rose and fell as mightily
as ever, but no seas broke. Giant waves mounted higher and higher,
gathering volume and power as they rushed down on the Empress,
but instead of breaking with a crash and hurling tons of water at the
helpless steamer, they subsided without foam or fuss. It was as
though some invisible hand had spread a great, elastic blanket over
the face of the seething waters. They billowed and tossed beneath
this invisible blanket, but they billowed and tossed harmlessly. The
power of the waves to smash things was gone. Amazed, incredulous,
disbelieving the very thing his eyes beheld, Roy watched the miracle
that was being performed. Finally it came to him that Captain
Lansford was putting oil on the sea.
In the nose of the Lycoming sailors had been at work for hours
preparing to perform the miracle that Roy was watching. Great,
cone-shaped bags had been made of canvas and stuffed with
oakum. The oakum had been saturated with storm oil. The bags had
been suspended over the forward wash-basins so that at the proper
time their contents could drain into the sea. Additional supplies of oil
stood at hand in cans. Long before the Lycoming came abreast of
the Empress, Captain Lansford had everything in readiness to spread
abroad the oil film that was now taming the seas before Roy’s
astonished vision. At the proper moment word was passed to start
the oil. With coarse sailmakers’ needles the canvas cones were
punctured and the oil began to flow. Drip, drip, drip, drip, it fell into
the wash-basins and made its way down the drain-pipes to the sea,
hushing the boisterous breakers even as Christ stilled the waters
with His command, “Peace. Be still.”
Three times the Lycoming circled the Empress, each time at a
greater distance, until the waters for a mile about the crippled liner
were coated with oil. Then Captain Lansford brought the Lycoming
as close as he dared to the Empress, which lay directly to leeward. A
great life-boat was unlashed and made ready for launching. Up to
this time Roy had remained in the wireless house. Now he made his
way to the deck, where some sailors were gathered beside the life-
boat. The captain stood on the bridge with a megaphone in his
hand. He roared out a call for volunteers to man the boat. There
was a rush for the smaller craft. Without pausing to consider, Roy
leaped into the boat. He found himself seated beside the sailor who
had come to the wireless house with the captain’s message. The
boat was manned almost before Roy was fairly seated. The third
officer sat in the stern to steer her.
The captain was scanning the sea critically. “Launch her!” he
bellowed suddenly.
The boat swung outboard and dropped on the smooth crest of a
wave. The tackles were cast loose and all hands gave way with the
oars that their tiny craft might not be smashed against the
Lycoming’s side. Before the next wave rose they were at a safe
distance from the Lycoming. The lines they were to take to the
Empress trailed astern.
From the deck of the Lycoming the oily sea had seemed
comparatively peaceful. Once Roy was on it in a small boat, he
found it was terrible. The little life-boat was tossed about like a cork
in a boiling caldron. Now it shot high in the air, lifted by some mighty
roller. Now it dropped down, down, down, until Roy thought it would
surely go to the bottom. Once away from the protection of the
Lycoming, the life-boat felt the full force of the wind. It seemed to
Roy the blasts would jerk him from his seat and throw him into the
maelstrom. Now the boat bobbed this way. Now she ducked the
other way. A feather whirling in the tempest could hardly have been
more unstable.
In such a sea none but an expert oarsman could wield a great oar
such as Roy now grasped. Had he been the least bit awkward with
it, he might easily have caused disaster. Roy realized that at once
and thanked his lucky stars that he had learned to row well that first
summer in camp at Fort Brady. Now he gave way smoothly and with
power. Through the darkness he tried to see the stroke oar and pull
in unison. The search-light pointed its powerful ray over their heads,
lighting the way for the steersman. It was useless to call the strokes
of the oars. In the shrieking wind no earthly voice could have been
heard. There was nothing to do but sit tight and pull.
Slowly the boat forged through the seething sea. It neared the
Empress, which seemed to bulk as huge as a mountain. Painfully the
little craft fought her way to the leeward side of the Empress and
crept as near as she dared. Lines were flung from the Empress. They
were bent to those the life-boat was towing. Slowly these were
hauled to the ship, and the crew began to pull on the heavy hawsers
to which the life-boat lines were attached. The Lycoming’s boat
worked its way along the lee side of the Empress, toward the davits
that had been swung outboard to lift it. Suddenly there was a great
outcry aboard the Empress. The anchor chains had snapped. At once
all hands were called forward to pull on the hawsers. Unless they
were got aboard the Empress was doomed.
Straightway the wind drove her directly toward the little life-boat.
With all their might the men in the boat pulled away from the ship,
which would have crushed them like an egg-shell.
In a moment they had passed from under her protecting side and
found themselves pitching wildly on the inky waves. To get back to
the Lycoming was impossible. To try to gain the Empress was worse
than useless. To stay where they were was folly. The only hope of
safety lay in scudding before the storm. Instantly the third officer’s
decision was taken.
“Give way,” he roared, and as the crew bent to their oars, he swept
the tiny boat around. In another moment the little craft was racing
before the tempest, tossing wildly, but thanks to the oil film, riding
buoyantly and safely. Rapidly the Empress and the Lycoming fell
astern. Soon they were lost to sight. Above the life-boat the night
was inky black. About her the waters heaved and roared. Ahead of
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