There’s a controversy brewing in the British press about our venerable (and not quite so venerable) higher education establishments. Someone, possibly in the government, more likely in the media, has finally cottoned on to the notion that if you suddenly quadruple the number of university places, and therefore lower the entry requirements in order to fill them, some of the resulting students may just possibly not be quite as bright as the ones who earned places under the old regime.
There’s more. Maybe, just maybe, some of the degrees that get handed out at the end aren’t going to carry quite the same academic weight as the ones that were earned twenty (or thirty, or forty) years ago when a university degree was harder to come by. Or it could possibly be the case that degrees from some of the older, established and harder-to-get-into universities will be regarded more highly by potential employers.
And maybe some of the subjects on offer for degrees… shouldn’t be. Back in the days of the dinosaurs when I got mine, a degree was an academic qualification, not a practical one.
The debate has only just begun. I await its progress and development with interest.
It reminds me of another debate which raises its head about once a year: why the divide between literary and crime fiction? Why can’t a good whodunnit be regarded as a classy novel? Where does literary end and popular/commercial begin? And even more controversially: what makes literary fiction better than the popular variety?
Maybe debate isn’t the word: sometimes I think whinge is a better one. Certainly it seems to give rise to a lot of wilful misunderstanding of what’s actually being said. Last year the trigger was the inclusion of Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 on the Booker Prize long list. A thriller, put up for a major literary award: shock horror! This year it was down to a few unguarded comments at the Harrogate Crime Festival from crime writer Benjamin Black, aka John Banville, former winner of said Booker Prize.
A few years ago I was at an awards ceremony which took place in a venerable educational establishment for no other reason than it was convenient, and a member of the judging panel had access to the space. But the venue attracted quite a few people from the groves of academe, and I chatted to some of them, as you do at these affairs, about what we were doing there and what we did when we weren’t attending awards ceremonies.
Naturally I mentioned a keen personal and professional interest in crime fiction – and some of the reactions made me a little sad. “Oooh, I do enjoy a good murder mystery,” said one person with Doctor in front of her name and a string of letters after it. “Don’t tell anyone, though. It’s my guilty secret.”
From the look on her face you’d have thought she was ’fessing up to a heroin habit or a bad case of kleptomania.
What worries me is the way people make value judgements. What makes a book good or bad? Don’t get me wrong; a lot of badly constructed, poorly written and just plain boring manuscripts come my way, and they’re easy enough to recognise. There are some like that which even get into print, though not, I like to think, under the Crème de la Crime banner. But given a baseline of good writing, if I prefer J D Robb to Hilary Mantel, or for that matter Benjamin Black to John Banville, does that make my reading tastes in some way inferior to those of someone whose inclinations are the other way round?
Why does good and bad have to come into it? What’s wrong with different?
Seems to me the world would be a grey and tedious place if we all liked the same thing. To each his own. Please.
This debates rages in a lot of genres, as far as I am aware. It seems to be XYZ Genre vs Literary Fiction. Urgh. I don't understand why anyone feels the need to put down someone else's work. Sure, we all have preferences, and thank goodness we do (your quote about a grey and tedious place rings true). My personal feeling is writers should band together and SUPPORT each other - regardless of what we write. Publishing is a tough industry so why would we want to add more dents to the already chinked personal armour we wear to try and our sanity and pride?
Books are for us to enjoy and/or to learn. I don't understand why some people view reading certain books as a badge of honour, like they are demanding respect because they read Proust or whoever....
Sorry, this subject tends to get me riled up (you may have guessed). Thanks for a great post!
Posted by: Alli | August 05, 2009 at 10:22 AM
I'll bang the drum very loudly for standards in many post-1992 universities. They've had to jump through countless quality assurance hoops.
And the best teaching I've seen has been in new universities. I went to a very traditional Redbrick uni where the standard of teaching was, to put it politely, variable. I've worked in new universities where a lot of the teaching is outstanding.
Sure, there are some lousy ones. But there are also some poor older universities as well.
John Banville should have kept his mouth closed. I've blogged before on the matter and suffice it to say that those 'literary' novelists who think genre fic is easy to churn out suddenly find it isn't.
Posted by: Lartonmedia | August 05, 2009 at 10:31 AM