Social Production of Hierarchy

Dear All,
I find this post very interesting because it critiques the question "what is the agenda of edu-factory".
Hierarchies have always been an integral part of non Western societies but the Western world in the last 400 years has had very specific agendas in categorizing non Western societies, for political and business purposes.
This extends to non Western education, non Western values, non Western cultural mores, non Western elites and non Western society at large.
Western universities, education models and education institutions of the Oxbridge variety have played along with that agenda and portrayed themselves as physical / virtual sites and locations for a "disinterested search for knowledge and rational critique", riding on the back of what are self defined as "Western cultural values" of freedom, discussion, open debate, sound models of higher education, vis a vis, non Western hierarchies in knowledge and education.
Globalization is now seeing the business models of many such educational institutions clutching for ways and means to retain their global influence. So often, the Western educational fringe raises the questions of corporatism, wage rates, exclusion etc.
This whole model of discussing cleavages in education is suspect, because it presumes the continued domination of Western cultural values and educational institutions.
I sometimes feel, 400 years of domination over the world is enough, is it not. Let others also talk.
So when one raises the issue in terms that Xiang Biao has raised, it immediately strikes some forgotten chords in people like me - brown from the outside, white from the inside.
Xiang Bao - "Institutionalized education in most part of the human society seems intrinsically hierarchical"
That it need not be so, is a purely Western idea of the last 400 years.
So I feel it would be good to see the numbers of people who have traditionally been in higher education in previous times and the numbers who are now seeking entry into so called "democratic / liberal institutes of Westernized higher education".
-- However, we should not deny that educational hierarchy is also widely recognized, respected and sometimes even celebrated by the larger society. --
As Xiang Bao goes on to discuss the numbers entering education in Asia, maybe we need some comparative analysis with the numbers in Europe and America and how these scale up in comparison with overall population. He has suggested the numbers from Far East.
I would be very interested in similar data regarding other Asian countries.
But somehow the colonial agendas would never make this a fashionable topic for study, and Indian TV shows are well known for advertising one or two scholarships to Oxbridge.
Imagine, Indian media gets British professors to conduct third rate quiz shows and millions of students go through rounds and rounds of elimination to emerge as victors.
What for ? For a one or two seats in Oxbridge !! From a pool of millions of aspirants.
Needless to say, among the millions other who are left out, a few thousands force their skeptical middle class parents to shelve out money and foreign currency for "paid education and degrees", convincing their sceptical parents that after their education they will be given residence / work permits in EU and America and will not be thrown back to native countries.
So, the competition for marketing and corporate funds for attracting this few thousands of Chinese and Indian students becomes an industry by itself.
Native students in Western countries, who see themselves as disinterested pristine academics, feel, suddenly shortchanged by the struggle for Chinese and Indian students, by the managers and corporate staff, marketeers and racketeers, of Western universities, which they think are "their own" by definition and by birth.
Regards,
Nagarjuna
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The social production of hierarchy, and what we can do about it : Notes from Asia

Here is Xiang Biao scheduled contribution.

The social production of hierarchy, and what we can do about
it: Notes from Asia

XIANG Biao

Institutionalized education in most part of the human society seems intrinsically hierarchical. One is supposed to progress from a “lower” level of learning to the “higher”; “average” kids study in mediocre schools, and the “outstanding” go to top colleges; and finally, “degree” is by definition hierarchical. Recent discussions on higher education have focused on the
governmentalization /corporatization (roughly meaning tightened administrative management in order to make university managerially accountable) and the marketization of universities. This essay explores the logic of hierarchy making in a larger, societal context. It is beyond dispute
that established institutions have deeply vested interest in maintaining exclusive and hierarchical systems, and it is also true that hierarchy, particularly in the form of the
ranking tally, is imposed top down by the establishment.
However, we should not deny that educational hierarchy is also widely recognized, respected and sometimes even celebrated by the larger society. Nor should we reduce the public acceptance to merely an example of false consciousness. Most people know much better than us (university nerds) how to deal with the world. There are ethnical and moral dimensions to the socially produced
hierarchy. Instead of aiming to eradicate hierarchy altogether (which cannot be a feasible agenda despite the ideological appeal), this post wishes to explore room in the social process of hierarchy making which may enable realistic action agendas.

Precarious Hierarchy and the Ethnics of Hierarchy :

In the modern time in general, higher education become less exclusive, and educational hierarchy become much less absolute. In colonial Asia, for example, formal English education had such a magic power that it directly contributed to the creation of the institution of modern
dowry in India. It is also safe to say that, in Asia at least, higher education become less hierarchical in the so-called neoliberal era. (I use neoliberal era with some reluctance. By this term I am referring to the period starting at the end of 1970s for China, the beginning of
1990s for India, the early 1990s for Japan, and the late 1990s for South Korea).
China launched a new, unprecedented round of university expansion in 1998. The number of newly admitted students jumped from 1.08 million in 1998 to 2.5 million in 2001. By 2007, the planed intake reached 5.67 million!
Similar to Japan and South Korea, entering universities is no longer a crucial life event—it is not difficult to get in, and furthermore getting in does not guarantee good job prospects. Students have more freedom in choosing universities according to location, subject or campus “culture” instead of a single system of hierarchical evaluation.
But hierarchy certainly does not go away. Universities become ever more concerned about hierarchical ranking.
Shanghai Jiaotong University produces one of the best known tallies in the world. This reflects the fact that previously fixed hierarchy is replaced by more dynamic and unstable
differentiation. Hierarchy is in struggle. This also suggests that the process of hierarchy making becomes more public, or social, than before when it was declared by the state or established by tradition.
Underlying the new project of hierarchy making in the higher education is a unmistakable capitalist logic. The higher rank a university secures, the higher tuition fees it
charges. But the opposite is untrue. In general, students cannot enter a high-rank university simply by paying more fees. There is a limit to capitalism.
A curious example is the mushrooming MBA courses in China. On the one hand, no other institutions are more conscious than the MBA programs about hierarchical ranking which directly determine the fees they charge. On the other hand, most of the MBA students, particularly those enrolled in the elite institutes in China, had work experiences and many are self employed, and thus the ranking does not mean much for them in the material sense (say, compared to other students who may need a strong university brand for looking for jobs).
When I asked an entrepreneur (incidentally, a Taiwanese) why he applied for an expensive MBA course in Shanghai, he gave me three reasons: good teachers, the reputation of the course (“it sounds good”), and the opportunity to prove that, after
working for many years, he is still able to pass tough examinations. The Chinese capitalist class in the making need symbolic capital, but they need “solid” symbolic capital, i.e., not cheap parody ready for sale.
The hierarchical ranking of universities undoubtedly facilitates exchange between financial and cultural capital.
But at the very same time as different types of capital are exchangeable, each capital must maintain minimum autonomy. Thus, in order to be acceptable to the general public,
hierarchy must be based on “merit” to some extent.
Universities also have to maintain a balance. For example elite universities in the US charge high fees but also provide generous scholarships. Scholarships attract good students to keep its ranking high which in turn justifies high fees.
In China at least until the very recent time, socially produced hierarchy in higher education has significant moral connotations. For example, lecturers and students from top universities are expected to be more vocal in criticizing the status quo, and the state have to be more careful in
dealing with professors from these institutions. In a largely authoritarian and politically conservative system, this status provide the institutions with special clout to be more independent, critical, daring in thinking alternatives, and sometimes more eccentric in behavior.
People rank the universities high to counteract the state power and private economic interest, no matter how symbolically.

New Battles :

Hierarchy itself may not be a problem. The issue is what kind of hierarchy prevails. Our goals should be, apart from continuing the historical progress of destabilizing and “softening” hierarchy in general, making the hegemonic hierarchy more ethical.
In Asia as well as elsewhere, states have been active in domesticating and incorporating the institutions that are high in hierarchy. The corporate world may have similar desires, although their efforts are less orchestrated and their relations to universities less clear. But, both the
state and the economic establishment need seemingly independent universities for the purpose of legitimation.
(Say, the state occasionally needs some “independent scholars” to back their views, and financial institutes also like donating money to “independent” learning institutes.) The contradictions internal to the project of legitimation provide important space for actions.
Furthermore, the interests of the state and of the capital do not always fit well, and playing one against the other can be another strategy.
I cannot quite imagine autonomous universities in practical sense. As Mao Zedong repeatedly reminded us, intellectuals are a piece of feather who cannot exist without someone else’s skin. We need others for our material survival. But perhaps we can fight for a more “autonomous” evaluation system with strong moral and ethical concerns.
Another important battle field is pre-university education. I am not too worried about the corporatization or privatization of universities as I believe that that will not go too far. Even state bureaucrats and diehard capitalists would frown upon universities that have no
intellectual or ideological teeth at all.
What is much more dangerous, for China, is the on-going process of privatization and hierarchization in secondary education.
As it is less easy for money to infiltrate into higher education, well-off families start the race early. Parents spend thousands of US dollars to send children to good primary and high schools and even kindergartens. (In Beijing, top kindergartens literally charge thousands of US
dollars for a seat.)
In Japan, elite private universities such as Keio and Waseda set up their own so-called “escalator” system including kindergartens, primary and secondary schools. Children from wealthy families buy the expensive ticket to enter the escalator on the ground floor,
which take them to the top universities in the future with certain “merits.” Thus social inequality is produced and reproduced without upsetting the “merit”-based hierarchy
of universities. In China, except those who are desperate to consolidate their newly acquired financial assets into firm class status, most people want to escape from the frenzied
competition in which children became the main victims. Thus there is social base for mobilization to fight against this trend. Among other things, top universities may be able to do something, even symbolically, to counteract the education industry.

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